Aftermath
by IzZbIzZy
Summary: 20 years after the Wormhole Treaty, times are tough for the species that inhabit the universe, and even tougher for the Crichton-Sun boys, who have to navigate it.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

D'Argo Sun-Crichton woke up with the familiar feeling that his head was twice the size of his body, and that his whole stomach was clutching desperately to his intestines, just to stay inside. He sat up and opened his eyes. No difference. He closed and opened them three times before it occurred to him it was dark, not that he had gone blind.

He reached upwards and felt the ceiling, barely four feet off the floor, and reached to find three walls on equally close proximity, but not a fourth.

"Hello?" Although his father had taught him never to call out into a dark empty room not knowing what was out there, he was too like his father to listen. His voice echoed back at him so he rearranged onto all fours and began to crawl towards the fourth wall, keeping one hand in front of him to guide the way.

"hellooo." He murmured to himself, another habit he had picked up from his father as the passage stretched on for metre after metre.

After a thirty seconds of crawling, he saw a glimmer of light, and the silhouette of a grate, a long way in front of him. He scrambled towards it, the churning in his stomach returning with the exercise until he reached the bars to peer out.

The light was dim and coming from what looked like a staircase in front of him; stone walls and candle light. He was probably still on Asci.

"Hello?" he asked again, feeling the bars to see how secure they were. They were very. "Oh frell."

A crunching noise made him jump and tense as the light grew larger with a door opening, and heavy footprints walked down the steps.

"Awake? Thought you never would be". D'Argo tried desperately to make out the face of the (man? Creature?) in front of him, but the dim candle blinded him as it approached and lit the way for the visitor to get out a red stick, which he proceeded to slam into the outside wall of D'Argo's cell, producing a creaking noise that sent the bars into the floor.

D'Argo thought for a thousandth of a second, and then darted between the dark figure's legs and towards the steps. He legged it up them, bursting through a heavy wooden door and into a brightly lit room, filled with men in large black armour suits; all with truncheons and pulse pistols in their hands.

"Oh dren." He felt a sickening crack as a truncheon hit him on the head from behind, followed by an explosion of pain and sinking feeling of darkness.

He awoke to the sight of a man in spectacles, looking down at him from a great height, that turned out to be the height of his legs, as he stood above D'Argo lying in a chair.

"Well hello there."

The man didn't seem to address D'Argo, so much as the general room, which D'Argo could see was crampt and full to the brim with bottles, needles, and metal. D'Argo could feel himself gulp as he glanced at the man who was now standing at a table, his back to D'Argo and his hands working away, picking up glass vials and tweezers and equipment.

He tried to move, but felt resistance from the shackles that tied his arms, legs and neck to the chair.

"Erm, hi, look, I think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding, I'm not even from this planet, you know? I was just visiting on my way through and I, Oh wow, that's a big needle." D'Argo winced as he felt the pinch of it going in, and a cool rush as the liquid went into his blood. "What the hell?"

The man began humming and returned to his work.

"Hey! Answer me goddamit, who the hell are you? Let me the frell out of here! What did you just inject into me?"

The man finished what he was doing and placed a stool next to the chair D'Argo lay in. His face showed he was old, but his eyes were bright and crystal blue, almost white. He smiled slowly and D'Argo saw he had no teeth.

"I'm a collector." He stated, his soft voice tickling on D'Argo's ears. He leaned in to stare at D'Argo and placing his cool hand on his pounding forehead, stroking it gently across the side of his face. "And you are a very rare find indeed..."

He stood up again and picked up another syringe, this one empty. He leaned in once more and drew out a thimbleful of D'argo's blood, ignoring the man's struggles and obscenities.

"If I'm right..." he hummed to himself, a sickening smile spreading across his face, "then you will be a wonderful addition to my collection, especially since I found the new girl. My how lucky I am..." He placed the blood on a piece of equipment that hummed a little and then lit up bright blue.

The toothless man clapped his hands together and smiled wider than before.

"Oh I am going to have such a wonderful sleep tonight. And so are you." He winked, "feeling drowsy?" But D'Argo could barely hear him as he fell backwards, falling into his head as a feeling of darkness consumed him.

He woke up in a cage. He could see all four walls, made with bars as thick as his fist, as he sat on a stone floor. In front of him was another stone staircase, and a man in an armour suit stood at the top, glaring down at him, or at least D'Argo assumed there was a glare behind the visor, anyway. He thought he saw pale, huminoid skin at his wrists and behind the grates of the visor. Peacekeeper maybe? Interion? Something new?

To his left and right were two empty cages, identical to his.

He was feeling distinctly tired, and the blurred memories of the night before seemed to give him no clue as to why his was here. He remembered he had kissed a pretty girl, and drank a lot of a drink that she had called Ratchet Ray, then a blank until a man with no teeth.

"Oi, you! How's about you tell me what the frell is going on!" he yelled, glancing around himself to see if there was anything he could use to help him out.

"Collection pieces should learn to shut up." Was the stoney reply. "Take some advice from your neighbour, she's been here long enough to know."

D'Argo glanced to his right at the seemingly empty cage and he saw a shadow move the slightest amount away from him. He realised it was a small figure. He leaned over to the adjacent bars and beckoned.

"Hey, you, who are you? You know how to get out of here?" The shadow didn't move or make a sound.

He was on Asci, he was pretty sure of that, passing through to have a drink and meet a few people. The one bar in the entire of the town they had gone to had been virtually empty, so drinks were cheap, and the whole crew had recently gotten a large thankyou donation.

Of course, D'Argo had found himself kidnapped before, but no one here even knew who he was, and he hadn't visited it before, so why anyone would want to lock him up was beyond him. Unless he got more drunk than he thought he had the night before and had really ticked someone off.

A clatter from above disturbed him as a second suited man walked down the steps with two bowls, one of which he placed in the not-so-empty cage to D'Argo's right, the other of which he placed at the front edge of D'Argo's. The man gave a curt nod to the man already standing by the cages, then strutted up the stairs again without a word, but with a vague air of superiority.

It was then that D'Argo realised he had never been so hungry in his life. He leapt on the and drank it as fast as he could, completely unaware until his last gulp that it was the most horrendous gruel paste he had tasted in a long time. Certainly not the worst food he had ever eaten, but since his father had become an ambassador, and had gotten a decent income, D'Argo had gotten used to having regular, decent meals.

He put the bowl down and turned to his right as a shape slipped out of the shadows and towards the bowl. He was surprised to see it was a girl. A peacekeeper girl in fact, that took the bowl and drank it, keeping her eyes fixed on D'Argo the entire time she ate.

"Hi." He whispered, careful not to move too quickly towards or away from the girl that looked like a rabbit in headlights. "I'm D'Argo, what's your name?" The girl frowned slightly, as though in confusion, and then slowly spoke.

"Hannah." She said quietly, her voice cracked through misuse.

"Do you know a way out of here?" The girl looked at him in confusion again and bit her lip, glancing up at the men who stood staring at the two of them in complete and stony silence. D'Argo repeated the question and Hannah slowly shook her head.

"looks like it's up to me then." He muttered, pretending to stretch a little while patting himself down to see if any of his extras were still in his pockets. He grinned a little to himself as he found his flasher, hidden in one of his pockets that was particularly difficult to find. He leaned back against the bars behind him and waited for the man to rearrange before he reached into it and pulled it out slowly, pushing the corners of his mouth down again into the expression of someone who had no intention of causing trouble. It wasn't an expression he practised much, and he suspected it wasn't all that convincing.

"Guard!" he said, suddenly, making the man jump at the volume, "hey, guard! I'm talking to you, you big pile of meaningless dren!" The guard walked slowly down a few steps but said nothing. "What? Scared of a man in a cage? God, you peacekeepers are all the same, don't know an insult when it's thrown on your face! No peace to keep so you just act as petty thieves and thugs around the universe! I thought your species was supposed to be superior." The man strode down the rest of the steps and stopped at the bars, watching D'Argo for a moment before punching him once in the nose.

D'Argo reeled back a little and realised he had had one too many hits on the head today to make this plan a good one, but he was in it now.

"That's all you got? Sitting there with your visor between me and my ability to punch you back!" The peacekeeper put up his visor, smiled, and punched D'Argo again.

D'Argo dropped the flasher and closed his eyes, hoping the girl would do the same, and listened as the peacekeeper cried out and fell to the floor.

He opened his eyes to see the guard had stumbled back, fallen over and knocked himself unconscious, his red stick key having fallen to the floor, about a foot away from D'Argo's reaching fingers.

"Oh for heavens – hey, Hannah was it? Could you do me a teeny tiny favour? Could you just try and reach that please?" He mimed it for communications sake and watched as the girl hesitated, looking from D'Argo to the key and back again as it sat two feet from her bars.

"If you could just, pass it over here..." He reached out his hand so that it was nearly touching the bars of her cage and held out his palm in front of her. She stared at it like he was absolutely insane. He didn't appreciate that look particularly. Not when not given substancially more evidence of it's truthfullness. She continued to stare at him until he relaxed his arm again and sighed.

"No? Okay then. Things to use, things to use."

He looked around his cage and saw some pebbles, which he reached out and grabbed, and then threw at the guard. Then he reached out with his leg and kicked the man, who flinched, but didn't move. It didn't necessarily help his situation, but it felt pretty good anyway.

He looked down and saw his bowl and grabbed both it and the one in the cage next door. He grabbed another 2 pebbles and began to hit one of them into the wood of the bowl, using the other as a hammer, until it was halfway indented into the underside of the bowl.

Then he took the second bowl and hit it against the wedged pebble in the first bowl, until the second bowl began to indent on the pebble, and the two bowls stuck.

He leaned as far as he could and reached for the stick, holding the wood with the tips of his fingers and hitting against it until it moved a little towards him, and then a lot.

"Ha ha!" He yelled as the red stick rolled towards him and D'Argo was able to drag it the rest of the way. He picked it up and showed it to the girl, a grin on his face that was short lived when he realised slamming it against the bars did nothing at all.

The girl watched as he hit every part of his cell, confusion filling his expression along with desperation, so that he didn't notice Hannah reach out to pick up his bowls, lean out and drag a purple stick that lay nestled in the guard's belt, towards her. He heard as the bars scraped downwards and she nervously stepped out, handing it to him through the bars.

He gave her his most charming smile and hit the bars in front of him with the stick, his expression falling somewhat when the bars crashed to the ground with a noise that would have been comically loud - if there had been anything in that situation to laugh about whatsoever. He waited for exactly three mississippis, and when no angry footsteps sounded down the stairs, he clambered out of his cage and stretched his legs.

"Well, cheers." He said, smiling at Hannah, and walked towards the steps. He looked back to see the girl wasn't following him. "Come on then, let's get out of here!" but her noticed her eyes were wide in terror, and when D'Argo reached out to grab her had she flinched back. He paused for a moment and noticed how pale her skin was beneath the dirt on her face. "How long have you been down here?" He whispered.

At that moment he heard a crashing as the door above them burst open, and Jack pushed his way through.

"Mum is so pissed at you D'Argo!" he yelled, walking down the steps. "Seriously, there was a twitch of the hand towards the pulse pistol when I told her where you were."

"No!" D'Argo glared as Jack tried to pull him up the stairs, "I was escaping just fine on my own!"

"Yeah, it looks like it."

"Seriously! I had everything under control, don't bust me out at the last second, you haven't rescued me!"

"A little thanks for your saviour would be nice."

"Oh for hezmana's sake, I swear to god if you tell mum and dad this was you helping me out of a situation I can't handle-"

"Who's the broad?" D'Argo glanced back at the girl, still wide eyed with fear at the bottom of the stairs, staring at the two of them.

"Her name's Hannah, I have no idea who she is."

"Well let's take her back and find out." He reached out and grabbed her arm, trying to pull her towards him.

Her piercing scream made him release his grip and stagger backwards.

"Jeez, what the frell?" D'Argo heard shouts above them.

"We have to go, come on D'Argo!"

D'Argo looked back at the girl, frozen where she was, her hands clasped at her sides. "Just follow us, okay? It's going to be okay, I promise, you're going to be fine." He held out his hand, ignoring the yells of his brother and slowly she reached out and took it. As soon as her palm touched his, he dragged her up the steps and into a brightly lit guard room.

He pulled her under a table as shots were fired around their heads. Jack pulled out a weathered pulse pistol and shot it a few times, yelling as he did so. The return shots were fewer, and after a few more yells and shots from Jack, they stopped all together.

They ran the length of the room through an open door in the back and into another room, increasingly filling with men in metal outfits.

"Oh for Pete's sake..." Jack let out an exasperated sigh and the stopped dead in the doorway, all three of them waiting in from of seven pulse pistols aimed straight for their heads.

"Got a plan of any kind?" D'Argo muttered under his breath, as one of the men started to step forward.

"Lower your weapons and lie on the ground, now!"

"I think I've got one." Jack said, the smallest of smiles appearing.

"Yeah?"

"Yup."

"Yeah?"

"I said yes."

"Well are you going to do it, or what?"

"Right sure, jump!"

Jack grabbed D'Argo's arm and yanked him off the ground, and D'Argo did the same to Hannah. The three of them jumped a foot in the air, and Jack threw a small crackling ball onto the ground, letting out a sudden burst of electricity across the floor and through the metal suits with men inside them.

There was a smell of burnt hair and the seven men jerked once, and then decided they all felt sleepy enough to fall to the floor.

"Nice! Where'd you get that?"

"Picked it up from a Grennij merchant a few weeks back."

"Sweet! You got any more of those?"

"A few back on Moya."

"Less useful right now."

"I'm surprised that one even worked at all, I figured it was a bust."

"Brilliant! You're plans are as air-tight as always."

"Hey, beggars can't be choosers, and damsels in distress don't get to complain about the weapons being used to save them."

"This is _not _a..." The guard closest to them on the right groaned and began to move again, and Jack gave D'Argo a quick look that he agreed with, and the two of them leapt towards to the door on their right.

They burst through into the open, where more fire filled the dry air around them.

"Where's the transport pod?" D'Argo yelled above the noise as they ran and ducked their way through the area.

"Bout half a mile south."

"Half a mile? What kind of a rescue is this?" A shot hit three inches from D'Argo as he said this, and he looked back to see the girl had completely shut her eyes, and was purely running wherever he led her. "Did you bring another pistol?"

Jack gave a slightly sheepish grin and shrugged.

"I thought you'd just got caught up in a bar fight or something!" They legged it a little further and threw themselves behind a wall. "Hey, how was I supposed to know you'd been kidnapped by someone who apparently has the entire planet on beck and call to shoot up anyone that escapes?" They dived behind a bunch of huge crates and caught their breath for a second while the shots rained down around them.

"Whatever, Jack, I'll kick your ass about it later. Last leg to the pod on three?" Jack nodded.

"One...two...three!" D'rgo pulled himself and Hannah out from protection and they ran towards the bright shape of the pod a way in front of them. They left the courtyard of walls and bricks and ran between some huts and houses until they reached an open and barren wasteland, where they ran to and fro to avoid the fire that followed them, but distinctly less than before. D'Argo heard the sound of heavy footfalls and metal on betal between blasts and dared a glance back to see four men in the steel armour running close behind them.

They made it to the pod as the group of men in armour suits did. D'Argo clambored in through the door. "You keep 'em out, I'll drive!" He let go of the arm behind him and threw himself onto the controls, flicking switches and pulling at things until he felt the ship rumble and lift. He heard the scream of a man as he was pushed out of the pod just as it lifted off the ground, and smelt the familiar stench of oil and ship as they lifted into the atmosphere, a few jolts each time a pistol shot hit them.

He could see the shape of Moya on their sensors and followed it, landing in the bay gently and perfectly, as was easy to do when no longer under fire.

They all tumbled out and D'Argo immediately began to pace towards his room.

"Tell pilot we need to starburst, I don't know whether or not that guy has ships." He strode into a corridor where he was met by the most terrifying site in the universe.

Aeryn had not aged a day for as long as D'Argo could remember, she stood now, all in black, her pulse pistol sitting on her hip, and her hand twitching slightly, as though she would love to pull it out and shoot at least one of her sons.

"Where the frell have you been?"


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Jack put his head on his hand and watched as Jared put a bandage over the girl's right arm and gave her a cup of water. The girl was strange looking; Jack could actually make out her features now the girl had cleaned up. She had a sharpness to her face that Jack couldn't quite put his finger on. Her cheeks were high and her lips looked as though they were always thoughtful, her hair was a mousy brown, but her body. God her body was something else.

D'Argo broke Jack's musings as he slapped him on the shoulder.

"Don't perve."

"I wasn't perving."

"Don't perve."

Jack chose to ignore his brother as they both stood and watched her stand up and walk towards them. She didn't smile, Jack hadn't seen her do so at all, she just looked at them with slightly empty green eyes.

"Hi, I'm Jack." He said, shoving out his hand in front of her. It was a classic greeting his father always used, and people in the universe almost never understood what it meant. To his surprise the girl took his hand and shook it gently, not taking her grey eyes off his face. The girl was really unnerving.

"So, you're Hannah, huh?" She nodded slowly and held her hand out to D'Argo, who shook it. Then a few moments of uncomfortable silence.

"So how come you ended up in that dump then? Whatever it was, collector did you say little D?"

"Yeah, something like that." The girl looked at them, her eyebrows frowning a little.

"Well where are you from?"

"I don't understand." She whispered, looking at the ground as though afraid they would be angry.

"Don't understand what?"

D'Argo snapped his fingers in the annoying way he did when he realised something.

"Translator microbes!"

"Don't be daft, who the hell doesn't have translator microbes?"

"Pilot, can you bring one of the DRDs up to tier two please, we need some translator microbes."

"Translator microbes? I'll send one up to you as soon as one becomes available."

"As soon as - oh whatever. Asap please, Pilot." D'Argo got no response.

"Okay then, let's just start off with some basics then, you're on Moya." Jack began, pointing to the walls around him, "A leviathan. Moya."He gave her a thumbs up, "It's a living ship. Pretty cool, huh?"

She looked at the ceiling at the points he had pointed to in what could have been wonder, but the expression on her face had a darkness behind it and he couldn't quite tell.

"Yeah, and she's called Moya. We're in... God where are we at the moment?"

"Somewhere near Thurlis I think, we're meeting Dad here in a day or so. Umm, do you know Thurlis? Thurlis?" She shook her head slowly in confusion and jumped back a space as a DRD whizzed round the corner with a familiar whirring sound.

It darted over to the girl's foot and injected her with microbes. She screamed and leapt back, falling onto a tray and sending bits and pieces flying.

"It's okay, calm down! Give it a minute." D'Argo rushed towards her and helped her up, holding onto her arm to stop her from shaking herself to the ground. Jack looked at the things he should probably pick up, and left them where they were.

"Hi... can you understand me now?" She looked at him and nodded. "I'm Jack and this is D'Argo, we're on Moya. A living ship. Our home."

"That's weird." She said, and pulled away from D'Argo's grip.

"So, where are you from?" She bit her lip and looked at the door.

"Do you have...Um, do you have any food?"

"If you're hungry enough, then yes, because you'll have to be starving to put enough up with the food cubes we have. Some shortage in the food industry, bla, bla, bla, it's all gone to pot since the main powers virtually shut down and farming and shipping has all gone to hell in a big black prowler etc etc." Jack began to walk as he talked and liked the fact that both the girl and his brother automatically followed him.

"It's all very fascinating in theory," D'Argo continued, "If you can actually do anything about it, but then of course we can't. Too young, too immature, I forget the reasoning, but apparently the ideal is not to get drunk every other weekend and pull girls... no matter how stunning they are."

"Not that we're not training. Mum's got us on some stupid schedule these days, apparently in her day 'the weakest of drannits would be able to keep up with her schedule, but we can barely manage to stay alive.'"

"But we try."

"Yeah, we try."

Hannah walked alongside them, staring at the walls as though they were made of gold, touching them every so often, as though to see what it felt like to be inside a ship that had total power over you.

They reached the cantine in minutes and Jack began to look through the cupboards to see if he could find anything that resembled food. He found a few food cubes and a couple of crackers that for some reason his parents refused to eat and laid them on the table.

"Blue and brown, my favourite colours!"

"They taste the same, but you can pretend they're something else if you close your eyes and, you know, completely ignore the taste in your mouth."

Jack picked up his own and swallowed it whole, realising as he did so that he had just eaten his dinner four hours early.

"Dammit." He muttered and watched as the girl picked up a blue cube and popped it into her mouth. Jack was about to apologise when a grin spread across her face. "Is it okay?"

"It's delicious!" she put her hand over her smile and closed her eyes.

"Wow, what did they feed you down there?"

"It was worse than this," D'Argo picked up his own dinner and put it back in the cupboard. The forward thinking Drak.

"So, what does it taste like?" He asked as the girl put another blue cube into her mouth.

"Blueberry bubblegum." She whispered, chewing and swallowing with the table manners of someone that had not eaten with others in a long time.

"Uh...huh." The ship shook and Jack tumbled to his right, a familiar sickening feeling rising up.

"Pilot, please say we hit something because of your inept driving." He said into his com, holding onto the table in case of another jolt.

"Hardly, it's the Darvins again. They want to speak to Crichton."

"Did you tell them he's not here?"

"Several times." Jack glanced at D'Argo.

"Have they actually ever met him before?" He asked, and saw D'Argo's frown forming. There was a pause as Pilot realised what Jack was thinking, but reluctantly he spoke.

"No."

"Right then!" Jack leapt up just the ship shuddered again, throwing him towards the door, which he proceeded to stumble through.

"Jack?"

"Yes little D?"

"Don't screw it up, I don't want to be blown to pieces."

"Yes D." He legged it to the deck, D'Argo and Hannah running behind him all the way to the main bridge.

"On screen Spock!" Jack had barely stood at the steering rod when the screen flickered up with a face so ugly it made his head hurt. With eyes as small as its nose, and a wide mouth that occupied the rest of its head, the Darvins had risen out of the muck of terror and become one of the seven species that Jack's father had written on the back of his notebook.

Jack had been told from pretty much the moment he could stand, that he looked the spitting image of his father, down to the cropped blond/brown hair and slight swagger when he walked. D'Argo had inherited the black hair and sharp nose of their mother, but for all intents and purposes, Jack looked like a younger, possibly slightly more handsome, version of his father.

"Hello, I'm John Crichton, who am I talking to?"

"I am Darvin, of the Darvins. Why have you not received our transmissions before now?"

"I have been incredibly busy, Darvin, there are matters of the universe that require my full attention, I hope that this one is one that is deserving of my time?" The Darvin shifted uncomfortably as self doubt flickered between his eyes.

"Of course. I come here to talk of the shipping arrangements we were supposed to lay down in the Great Announcement. It has been almost a third of a cycle and still no word has come through about the restrictions being lifted."

"And exactly what makes you assume they will be lifted?"

"Well... You said they would..."

"Yes. Of course I did." Jack felt the back of his hands itch like they always did under pressure, and he desperately ignored the urge to scratch them. "Well as you know, it's an unsure time for shipping, we have to make sure the proper command system is in place before we let go of the restrictions. There has to be order, and order in a universe as big as this is not an easy thing to come by, as I'm sure you know."

"Of course, I-"

"I'm sure you also know," Jack raised his voice a little, "that every other one of the shipping freelancers has the same restrictions, which are put in place – as you know – to stop any overachievers like you from getting greedy. It's a hard time for all, Mr Darvin, one group cannot start profiting more than any other yet. Your time will come when your excellent service and superior ships will be the asset to you, you so desperately want them to, but for now I suggest you stop wasting my time and do your jobs." Jack took a deep breath in and stood as tall as he could, looking the Darvin straight in his three eyes.

The Darvin seemed to contemplate for a moment before he bobbed slightly, and the screen abruptly vanished.

"Nothing like John, but I suppose you're new at this." Aeryn strode into the room and Jack's gave her a sheepish grin as she fixed her stare on him.

"They would probably have kept shooting at us until dad got here. This way was quicker!" Aeryn gave a look that plainly showed what an idiot he was, but when she turned away he gave himself a quick grin. Got away with it.

Aeryn walked over to a panel, pressed four buttons and talked to the shell, "Pilot, how far away are we from the rendezvous point?"

"We're there now, shall we dock in Thurlis?"

"No, I don't like that place, besides, too many people will recognise us. Stay here for a little while, we'll dock only when Crichton messages us to say he's there."

"Of course, Officer Sun."

"Besides, I don't want to give you boys any more opportunities to get in trouble." She glared Jack in the eye until he dropped his gaze. "So, who's this?"

When Hannah stared at her, frozen behind D'Argo, Jack spoke.

"This is Hannah. The girl D'Argo picked up from Asci."

"I did not pick her up from Asci. I rescued her, she was a prisoner next to me, with the collector."

"Yes, a man we're still looking up on." She said thoughtfully, looking the girl up and down with a cold stare that meant she hadn't decided whether or not to like a person. "Where are you from?"

The girl shook her head.

"I don't know."

Aeryn frowned.

"How can you not know? What do you remember about before you were captured?" A dark light flickered behind the girls eyes and she suddenly seemed a lot younger. She shrank back a little. "Nothing? Nothing at all?" The girl shook her head and stepped back, her hands clenched together against her chest.

"I think she can't remember anything." D'Argo said softly, "cause she doesn't want to remember what happened to her down there." The girl continued to stare at Aeryn, who did not break her gaze.

"Fine, then." She said briskly, as Hannah's eyes slowly slid to the floor. "Why was she captured in the first place?"

"Ooh, I know this one! The collector said she was... special, or unique or something." Aeryn glanced at D'Argo.

"Special and unique are rarely good combinations for this crew."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

"So how're ma boys?" Crichton stepped off the transport pod with his arms out wide, and despite being far too old for such things, both D'Argo and Jack let him pull them into a rough hug.

Crichton put his arms around the two of them and began to lead them immediately towards the control room, where his wife would be controlling.

"So? What did I miss? Anything happen while I was away?"

Jack glanced at D'Argo, and D'Argo gave him a glance in return.

"Nothing." Jack said.

"Nothing at all."

"Pretty quiet really."

"Positively boring."

"Well that's what I like to hear!" Their father exclaimed, giving them each a pat on the shoulder and continuing to lead them through. There always seemed to be a lot of fast walking when their father was about. Fast walking and running, broken up by periods of yelling and occasionally screaming. Good fun, really.

"How was your trip?"

"Three people tried to kill me, and I had to forcibly remove a woman from my room by waving a shoe at her face." Usually the boys understood even their father's weirder expressions, but this one they both looked puzzled at. "Don't ask." He said, his right hand making a waving motion to flick the terrible memory away, "…and don't tell your mother." He added as an afterthought, and both the boys flicked each other a smirk.

They rounded a corner a few moments later and strode in matching strides into the main control room, its brown and red walls only further contrasting with Aeryn, standing tall and at attention in Peacekeeper black, matched with her long, black hair.

Crichton walked straight into the room and without a moments hesitation leaned in to kiss Aeryn, his arm looping round her waist briefly. D'Argo turned away so he wouldn't have to see it, but he was always secretly happy to see his parents little gestures. They separated after a moment, but Crichton leaned against the panel she was standing by, keeping close to her.

"So, what did the boys do this time?" D'Argo's heart dropped instantly and he turned to his dad in indignation.

"What? Nothing! I said-"

"Oh, please! 'positively boring'? I was gone for a week. That means at least 1 major event and possible near death experience must have happened."

"I-" Whilst D'Argo tried to think of a single thing to go against such infallible logic, Aeryn raised a single, powerful eyebrow.

"Jack tried to talk politics to two Davin officials, by pretending to be you, and D'Argo got kidnapped and picked up a stray."

"Oh for Pete's sake, Jack! If you don't want to learn about politics, then don't go around pretending you know a damn thing about them!" Jack looked sheepishly at D'Argo, but even if he could have helped his brother, he was inclined to agree that Jack's fondness of "playing dad" was wearing thin. If only it were solely restricted to bad ambassadorship…Ambassadorness…? Ambassory...?

"…A stray what?" Crichton's voice cut D'Argo's thoughts short and his head snapped back round to the present and to his parents.

"Humanoid." Aeryn answered, when D'Argo hesistated with the answer.

"Could be worse. Who kidnapped you this time?"

"A creepy guy, went by the name of 'Collector'"

"What did you do to piss him off?"

"Nothing!" He looked at his hands and rethought his answer "...Possibly a drunken something. But nothing that would have warranted locking me up and putting me in a cage. A friggin' cage! It was all very Planet of the Apes!"

"Yeah? Which ape were you?" Jack's hilarious input got three matching glares from the rest of the room.

"You're sure you didn't do anything?" Crichton asked warily, the glimmerings of anger in the back of his eyes.

"Nothing! I am at least," D'Argo consulted his hands again, "…80% sure!"Crichton turned to Aeryn.

"What do we know about this Collector dude?"

"Nothing except what D'Argo has told us. I've never heard the name before."

"New kid on the block?"

"Quite possibly."

"Maybe it's time to talk to-"

"I already called him."

"That's' my baby!"

"Nobody kidnaps a Crichton-Sun without some serious consequences." D'Argo saw his mum's dark look matched by his father's and flinched a little. The two of them talked like death and destruction were parts of life, but if anyone laid a single finger on either himself or Jack, the two of them got a look in their eyes that made him think that nothing could get in their way.

Which made sense, of course, because usually nothing could.

"Well then, in the meantime, let's meet this stray of yours, D'Argo."

"She's not a stray." D'Argo said sharply, "I rescued her from whatever hell hole I was put into.

"So where is she?"

"Jared's just running a couple of medical examinations, see if she's okay."

"Well let's go see if she is!"

The three boys walked down the corridor, leaving Aeryn to watch them go from the control panel. He glanced back and gave her a little smile, and D'Argo saw his mum give him a small one back, worry still hidden slightly behind it.

They strode through the maze of Moya's corridors with quick ease. Crichton knew Moya like the back of his hand, but his sons knew her better.

They had begun to learn the maze of rooms and corridors as soon as they could crawl, and by the time they could walk, they realised that whilst they were big enough to clambour about quite effectively, they were also small enough to fit into the nooks and crannies that Moya had to offer. D'Argo could not count the number of times he had stumbled upon a new area as a child, squeezing through a gap barely bigger than a DRD and discovering a secret hideaway no one else knew existed.

D'Argo suspected he knew Moya better than the Peacekeepers that had raised her. The only ones who rivalled his knowledge were his younger brother, and Pilot himself of course.

They turned a corner into the medical room and nearly walked straight into Jared, who saw them and stumbled back in surprise. He looked like it wasn't his first shock that day.

"Jared, how's it going buddy?" Crichton clapped a hand on Jared's shoulder, and the younger man beamed up at him with unrestrained admiration.

"Just great, meester Crichton seer, just great!" His thick, Cheveon accent snuck through into every word he said, but "i"s were where his speech stuck in his throat, something the translator microbes might have been able to deal with if it had been an accent that any of the rest of his species had. Jared stood almost a foot shorter than D'Argo, his thick frame making his awkward mannerisms almost comical.

"How's Hannah?" D'Argo asked, stepping around him to walk into the medical room, where Hannah sat on the bed, sitting in an old peacekeeper uniform that D'Argo didn't recognise, clearly having been scrubbed from head to foot. Her skin was even paler without all the dirt than it had been when he first saw her.

"Hi, Hannah, how's it going?" He asked, approaching her carefully and, having no idea what the social niceties of speaking to a clearly terrified, and possibly slightly crazy woman you had rescued but knew nothing about, D'Argo settled for a half-hearted wave.

It seemed to do the trick as she seemed completely relieved to see him and gave him a small wave back, leaping up abruptly, and half running to grab onto his arm, turning to the others in the room with a look that questioned what they were doing there at all.

"Um…Okay…" D'Argo said, not wanting to put an arm around her, but definitely not, not wanting to.

"Hi, Hannah?" Crichton asked, "I'm Crichton. Pleased to meet you." He reached out his hand, and D'Argo saw the surprise in his face when Hannah reached out and shook it.

Jared walked up to them and spoke in a low tone, until all of them leaned in close to what he was saying. He had a flair for the dramatic, something his father had shared. Jared was from Gaving Primus 3, the third best country in a cluster of fairly insignificant planets save for the huge lakes of Gaving Oil that scattered the surface. Gaving Oil was a key element in the production of many different machine parts – the most notably being rather large guns.

Crichton had been in peace talks with the four Gaving planets a few years before, and had successfully managed to get Primuses 1, 2 and 4 on board with the Wormhole Peace Treaty. Gaving Primus 3, however, which boasted the largest oil deposits, largest cities and the fourth highest free standing mountain in the entire Gavinus galaxy, would not agree to something that could limit their selling (and mountain tourism) potential.

Unless of course Crichton agreed to take on the High Minister's son as an apprentice and teach him all that Crichton knew and show him the galaxy?

D'Argo remembered his mother had still been laughing when they got back on the ship, and even Crichton had been forced to admit that perhaps he wasn't the best candidate to teach a man about how to survive in the big wide universe.

Still, that was 3 years ago, and Jared was practically one of the family now. One of the weirder members, perhaps, but that had never stopped their family before.

"So ee ran some tests." Jared said, glancing to his right for anything sneaking behind him. To his surprise, there was nothing there. "Wanted to see how she was doeeng, pheesically. So ee ran through some blood scans, then ee thought, heck, thees blood eesn't peacekeeper. No seere." He paused for effect."Eet's human."

"Humanoid?"

"No! Human! Just like yours meester Crichton!"

"But that's not possible." Crichton said, suddenly looking at Hannah in as though she had grown a pair of heads. Possibly a pair of heads with rather large teeth.

"Ee checked! Honest to anytheeng meester Crichton, ee double checked!"

Crichton turned slowly to Hannah and twisted his mouth to the side thoughtfully, "You come from earth?" He asked her, his voice gentle but broking no argument. She just looked at him blankly for a moment and looked up at D'Argo; so Crichton tried a different tack.

"Hannah. That's a pretty funny name, huh?" She shrugged and watched Crichton's causal air with a wary one of her own. "Not a name you hear much round here. Do you remember how you got it?"

Hannah looked at him like he was a little bit dim before answering, "My parents."

"And where do your parents live?"

"On the farm."

"And where is the farm?" Hannah seemed to think for a while, then her eyes got dark from behind and she shook her head slowly.

"I don't know." She backed up a little from Crichton, still gripping onto D'Argo's arm like a vice. He winced a little but made no move to shrug her off.

"It's okay, Hannah. We're friends. We won't hurt you." Hannah's looked managed to be both disbelieving and accusing. Crichton tried again, a little more firmly, and little more loudly; "Where was the farm?"

Instead of replying, Hannah clenched her teeth tightly together and bit one side of her lip, then the other, then the other, then the other. Crichton looked like he was about to ask again, but she took a breath, hesitated, took another, and spoke softly through her teeth with one side of her lip still clenched between them.

"I had a dream once," she began slowly, thinking through her response bit by bit, "that I was on a farm, and there were people there, and there wasn't a cage, and there was the sun." She gained a little momentum as she went. "We called it Weatherford Creek, but sometimes we called it Tenessee." Crichton gave a sharp intake of breath that confirmed to D'Argo what they suspected without any words.

"And sometimes there would be rain, and sometimes there would be sun, but it didn't really matter which was which, because they both made the plants grow, and we kind of liked both."

There was a heavy silence that settled on the room like a layer of dust or ash. Crichton took a slow inhale and D'Argo saw him bite down a few swear words, opting instead for: "Do you remember how you got here?"

The dark look rose behind Hannah's bright blue eyes, and she swivelled them upwards to D'Argo's – a request for help, a request to stop, to go backwards. D'Argo wanted to grant it, but his father gave him a sharp look, so he returned the stare with the kindest one he could muster.

"Hannah, can you tell us exactly what you remember?" D'Argo said gently. Hannah swallowed and looked down to the ground, her request not granted, and the only way forward from there.

"In the dream I am ten years old. But I might be older. Or maybe younger." Hannah plucked at an invisible strand on her borrowed uniform and slowly released her arm from D'Argo's grip. "I was playing in one of the fields and then there was this bright light, and there were all these voices and screams and then I was in a cage." She looked at the ground and paused. The four of them exchanged glances and waited for her to pause again, but she took a small breath and powered through.

"There were men that yelled at us and said a whole bunch of things I didn't understand, then it went dark and there was just me and lots of other people and the people cried a lot and then after a while we were all just quiet."

"The Collector's men took you from Earth?" Crichton asked gently; but to their surprise, Hannah shook her head.

"No. The men were so pale, they looked almost white. They had sticks and spoke in a language I didn't know."

"Do you remember anything about the ship? What it looked like? What clothes the men wore?"

"I was in a big, dark room. The men wore rags and held sticks… I" Hannah trailed off and her mind seemed to get lost in a thought process. She muttered something to herself then looked back up at them, as though she was confused why they were still there.

"Is there anything else you remember?" Jack asked, leaning in a little so D'Argo could see the impatience behind his eyes.

"No…It wasn't a nice dream." Hannah stated, daring them to question her, "I tried to forget that bit."

Jack gave his dad a look and Crichton nodded. He straightened up again and beckoned his two sons closer, leaving Jared to lead Hannah back onto the medical cot.

"So pale, almost white. Cages in a big dark room. Doesn't narrow it down by much." D'Argo muttered under his breath, glancing at Hannah, who now stood, a thoughtful frown on her face, her lips pressed tightly together.

"What're the chances she's making it all up though?" Jack asked.

"What?" D'Argo's sudden anger told far more than he had probably intended it to, "I don't think she has a clue what's going on, why would she lie?"

"It's not like we haven't been infiltrated before." Jack said, pointedly, and D'Argo's face burned bright red.

"That was different." He defended, and then forced his mouth closed to stop it from rising to the bait so neatly set up for him.

"Boys," Crichton stated, his eyes still glancing at Hannah from time to time, Hannah's gaze always managing to flick upwards as he did so to meet his eye. "I'm inclined to believe her, but I don't want to take any chances, we'll talk to Snitch first." He looked over to Jared, meaningfully, "I think it would be best if Hannah stayed here for a little while. Until she gets her bearings."Jared nodded, knowingly and tipped an imaginary hat that he may or may not have actually believed was on his head.

"Reeght you are meester Crichton!"

"Aeryn, did you catch all that?" Crichton leaned into his comm badge and listened for the voice on the other end.

"Yep, I got it. Starburst is ready to go."

"Then let's letta rip!"

"Counting down to starburst. Three, two, one-" A lurching feeling lifted D'Argo's stomach up towards his ears and filled them with the roaring sound of blood. He had once listened to his brother explain the feeling of starburst to a Luxan woman while drunk. D'Argo had watched, amused as Jack had managed to manage:

"Feels like … mgbhl… you're moving in a thousand directions at once…uslumph… your brain is squiggling but your eyesight stays the same and … oopl…Also you get a hangover afterwards without the fun part beforehand … Hey, do you wanna get out of here?" And at that point the woman had given him a punch square in the nose, and Jack had fallen back onto his ass, where he could get a fantastic look at the Luxan woman's legs as they strode off.

He had been pretty proud of the description then, and had demanded to know why his older brother hadn't defended him.

"When you need defending, I shall defend you." D'Argo had stated, as he dragged his brother to his stumbling feet and helped pull him out of the bar.

After a few moments of sea-sickening movement, they lurched to a halt, and everyone in the room stumbled forward, nearly onto their faces, with Jared and Hannah perhaps coming closer than the others.

After recovering the remnants of their brains and dignity, the three boys exchanged identical smiles and Crichton pushed his comm on his shirt again.

"That was quick."

"We missed the mark by a little way. Heading towards Gyrhna#pl3 now."

"Great, how long?"

"About three arns, give or take."

"Well then, looks like it's time for a bit of dinner." Crichton announced and gave his boys a quick thumbs up before leaving the room and a side glance at Hannah as he strode through the door. Her eyes instantly went up to meet his.

Jack gave D'Argo a quick look of his own, and then powered after his father, but D'Argo hesitated a moment, and looked over at Hannah, who was sitting at the bed and staring at him again.

"Hi." He said, shifting from one foot to the other, and then back again under her gaze.

"Hi." She agreed, swinging one leg to and fro and keeping her blue eyes fixed on his.

"What are you thinking?" He asked, genuinely and suddenly incredibly curious.

"The Collector told me I was unique, special. The only one like me. There was a time I knew he was wrong, and there was a time for a little while I would tell him that, but he never believed me, and every day I forgot whether I was right or not."

"You were right, you're-"

"But you people think the Collector was wrong, that I'm the same as other people. You think the place of Tennessee is real, not a dream, don't you? That the people I remember are true."

"Yeah, we do, I-"

"So now I wonder who is crazy? Is it me? Is it my dream? Or was it the Collector all along?" Her eyes flicked a little to the left to look at the wall beyond, and D'Argo could almost feel his temperature drop as her look left him, "but then, maybe it's just me again. Maybe I've gone crazy again, switched back."She seemed thoughtful again.

"I saw a man go crazy once, in the cage next to me. He was crying and crying until suddenly he went quiet, and then he stopped eating, and the Metal Men called him 'crazy' and that made it true.

"See, if someone says you're crazy, then you are. But what happens when different people say different things? Who's crazy then?"

"I don't think you're crazy." D'Argo said, quietly, and Hannah looked at him once more.

"Really? I think you are."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Gyrhna#pl3 was a planet that few people visited and even fewer people talked about. The local people had heated debates every cycle or so to decide whether this was due to their crumbling political system, or the fact the planet's name was virtually impossible to pronounce. Every cycle came up with a different outcome, and so they swapped between trying to change to political system and the name. Neither was ever successful in the space of a year, and so very few people continued to visit the planet Gyrhna#pl3 on a cycle-by-cycle basis.

The only reason Moya pulled up to the dingy planet was so that they could meet up with Snitch, who happened to live there for at least a few months at a time, and happened to be there at that moment, which was known to the people of Gyrhna#pl3 as Day 2597845 since the rebellion, and known to an increasing number of planets as Cycle 19, Month 3, Day 12 of the Wormhole Peace Treaty.

Despite various objections on all sides, it was eventually decided that Crichton should stay to man the ship, whilst Aeryn, D'Argo and Jack went down to the surface.

Jack sat on a passenger seat of the transport pod, his seatbelt securely fastened, watching as his mother piloted them down through a grey, but angry storm, sitting at the controls with her face scrunched tight in angry concentration that would have stopped the storm in its tracks if only it could see her expression.

"Frelling, frell of a frell." Jack muttered under his breath as the pod lurched to one side and then changed its mind halfway through, swinging to the other side instead.

"Brace!" Aeryn belted above the pounding of rain on metal outside and Jack saw a burst of blue/green lightning hit the front of the ship, leaving a small black dent in its wake. "Frell!"She added as she saw it, and banked them sharply to the left again, pushing the pod down into an alarming angle that caused them to plummet below the storm line at a speed Jack didn't want to name.

He kept his eyes wide open, looking out through the front screen while his stomach fought its way up his body. He braced for a few seconds, his hands claws grabbing onto the sides of his seat, then he let go a little to peer a bit further ahead of them, just in time for the pod to slam its body down onto the dirt below them, sending Jack flying upwards as far as his seatbelt would let him, then thumping him back down on his ass again.

Aeryn managed to stay steady on a miracle that Jack had come to expect of her when she was piloting anything, and he quickly pulled off his seatbelt, craning round to see D'Argo doing the same.

"You boys all alright there?" Aeryn asked, not turning away from the panel, which she pressed madly, releasing the back door and locking the system down.

"Fine."

"Fine."

"Then let's go." All business, their mother stood up and led them out of the pod, glancing behind her only once to check her sons were keeping pace. Jack and D'Argo were. Since they could walk their mother had drilled them on protocols, essentials and survival for every event they might encounter. The two of them knew all about Peacekeeper regulations, Scarran politics, Nebari mind control.

They had started lessons as early as Jack could remember, and while their father taught them about Earth, and told them stories of his adventures, their mother had insisted they knew everything the two of them could possibly need or want to know. At the time, both of them had spent their lives trying to get out of assignments, feigning illnesses in creative ways, and finding new ways to escape the torture of hearing about treaties, but now they were older, Jack and D'Argo found every lesson they were taught as children, invaluable.

All of this culminated to the fact that when their mother told them it was time to act, the Crichton-Sun family acted with efficiency and effectiveness.

The three of them strode in a formation they had learned to easily fall into, with Aeryn leading the way and Jack and D'Argo flanking her on either side.

The landing dock they had managed to bump down onto was a little way out of the main city, where they immediately started to head. Its buildings rarely went about three stories, and all of them seemed in disrepair, signs of poverty seeping through every crack in every wall.

The smell of the place was near unbearable when they stepped off the pod, and got steadily worse as they approached the city. After a few minutes of walking through damp streets thick with grime and a warm fog that settled near their feet, however, the smell softened to a sticky taste in the back of Jack's throat, that he was fairly sure was at least partially poisonous, if not actively so.

The house that Snitch usually resided in was the shell of an old ship, jutting out from the houses around it. Jack thought it was the ugliest pile of crap he's ever laid eyes on, but he had heard that Snitch was proud to a fault of his home, convinced that the aging metal and crumbling walls were a sign of 'quirky intelligence' that added to an air of mystery.

There didn't seem to be anything particularly mysterious about a big pile of junk, but what did Jack know?

Three knocks, followed by a pause, then one more, a signal that was known throughout the systems as the least secret code in the galaxy. Snitch would let anyone enter his humble abode, assuming they had either cash or information.

His setup was a pawn shop of tit-bits and tails. He would offer information, if enough money was presented, or he would pay hard cash for information people might have. His rates were atrocious, but he had carved out a singular niche in that he was the half-son of a Charrid official in the high court, and while he would never be recognised as anything other than a slightly unwelcome smell on the Charrid home planet, it made him slightly difficult to kill without pissing off one of the great powers in the galaxy.

That really just meant he could trade information about people, and assuming it was all true, they couldn't blast his brains out.

They waited for a few moments before a half-humanoid, half-lobster head jutted out of the doorway, and Snitch peered his ugly nose out at the three of them. He squinted in the grey overhang of a sun a little bit too far away from the planet to really give any warmth or light, then recognised Aeryn with some effort.

"Officer Sun!" He exclaimed, his door opening wide and a smile slitting across his face, "what a pleasure, what a pleasure!" He stepped back to let them into the wide hall that would once have been a landing bay for incredibly small shuttle pods when the ship had once been in the air.

"What brings you to my humble abode on this fine day on Gyrhna#pl3?"

Aeryn walked through and her sons followed in unison, careful to keep their expression neutral despite the near darkness that fell when the door was closed behind them again.

"I've come for information." Aeryn stated, as though it was completely and insultingly obvious.

"And what's your offer? Information for information, perhaps?" His wiggled his fingers, the temptation creeping onto his face, "I'm sure you have all sorts of lovely little bits and pieces. I could offer you a very good deal…"

"As always, Snitch, my information is mine and mine alone." She pulled out a bag from her belt and held it out towards Snitch, who looked disappointed, but reached for it all the same.

Aeryn pulled it back, drawing his fingers outwards, until he relaxed his arm and gave her an understanding smile.

"Of course, of course, information before money, as always, as always…But maybe if I could have a look…" Aeryn gave him a cold stare, which Jack matched, and he assumed D'Argo did too. He had been on the receiving end of such a glare before, and he knew the three of them together could make even the most slimy of men feel ill at ease in their own home.

"Of course, of course…And what particular subject were you hoping to hear about?" He asked, licking his lips and turning his ear in an exaggerated movement towards them.

"The Collector. What do you know about him?"

"The Collector, the collector." He tapped the sides of his head with all six of his fingers, the slight claws tapping the side of his shelled head with disconcerting clacks, "well yes, yes, The Collector has been around for years now, years and years, but small scale things. He likes unusual objects, any kind really, anything you can offer him, but what he really likes is unusual species. Odd hybrids, one of a kind mutations, the occasional Last Member of a once great civilisation. I hear he has quite the collection of Peacekeeper mixes with a whole variety of…"

"He's been in the business a while?"

"Been around for, oh maybe fifteen, twenty cycles? Give or take."

"And what about large scale collections; pickups of whole groups of species?"

"Oh, no, no, The Collector cherry picks, selects particulars, usually slaves, here and there, he rarely goes out himself to collect them, and he would never want a group, where's the fun in that?" He paused for a moment as though he actually wanted an answer, but the four of them just watched him until he continued.

"No, no, no groups, definitely not…What makes you ask?"

"Have you heard of any movements of groups of humans, from Earth?" Aeryn asked, crossing her arms ahead of her, "humans taken from the surface of the planet in large scale ships?"

"A very interesting question…" the man's eyes narrowed and widened disconcertingly, "any particular reason you ask?"

All three of them raised an eyebrow in unison. Snitch coughed slightly into a scabbed hand and gave a half smile.

"Ahem. Yes, well…I haven't heard anything of mass herding from Earth. No one's been able to get to there since your husband, our great ambassador," he snipped his fingers like scissors, "got rid of that little pathway. So no, I haven't heard of anyone coming from earth." Aeryn frowned impatiently.

"Nothing? Nothing of humanoids being taken prisoner? It would have been around twenty cycles ago."

"Well, I mean that's a little vague, isn't it? Twenty cycles ago? Long time to remember a single ship of humanoids..." Aeryn rearranged just enough for the money to clink an incentive his way. Snitch glanced at the bag and tapped his head again.

"Well... I mean, I suppose there were a few talks of some humanoid beings taken by a group of Nebari rebels. They got a whole bunch of Sebacians, but no one could figure out where they were from, and no one claimed them, so." He spread his palms out in innocence, "if no one claims their people, then everyone's in it for themselves, no?"

Jack ground his teeth together. No, was the answer to his irritating and rhetorical question. No, not since Jack's father had been trying to bring some order to this crap-hole of a universe, who's chaos had brought them to the brink of war and back again with their "in it for themselves" attitude combined with a large dose of love for anything that exploded.

"So no one thought to question a large group of Sebacians being taken into slavery by a group of rebel Nebari?"

"Look, Officer Sun, I appreciate you may not approve, but times are hard now, and were even harder back then. There was uncertainty, no one knew who was on whose side, and the Nebari are hardly the sort of species you want to frell with, with no more than a vague notion of slavery. By the time the anti-slavery laws were brought in, no one knew where they'd put them, the Nebari denied all existence of them, and the whole thing was forgotten except by those whose job it is to remember. Now, is there anything else I can help you with on this fine, fine day?"

"Where are the slaves now?"

"As I stated, no one knows. All trace was lost." Aeryn took out the bag from her belt, and then produced another from the inside of her jacket, she held them in both palms, keeping her eyes on Snitch.

"All trace?"

The slit of a smile again.

"Well, perhaps a few rumours remained…A couple of whispers here and there, but the information isn't particularly concrete."

"Where?"

"There is a small moon that circulates Nebari Prime, there are a few settlements scattered across the surface, and rebels have been known to hide out in the caves there from time to time. All underground, of course, hard to find, hard to blow to smithereens without rather annoying the other habitants of the moon. There were rumours the people were hidden there. Deep underground…And I mean, deep, Officer Sun," his voice lowered and he looked genuine for a glimmer of a moment, and then it was gone.

"The Nebari are not people you want to annoy," he continued, "I don't need to tell you that, but Nebari rebels. Well they are a new story. They have the technology, and the means that much of the Nebari government contains, but they have a certain…Passion, that the rest of the species lacks.

"But that was twenty cycles ago, the slaves will have been sold off by now, or used in the mines or...Well there's a lot of creative ways one can kill a slave." Aeryn fixed him with a cold stare, and he continued a little faster, "or they could still be alive, working on the moon, doing their bit for the Nebari rebel cause. Who really knows in this universe?" Snitch straightened up and a smile returned to his face, his arms spread wide once more.

"Well that's all I know, the recompense will hardly be worth the great quality of knowledge that I have given you today, but I will take it with a heavy heart and a lighter soul." He held out a single palm and Aeryn dropped both bags in it. They had overpaid him, Aeryn would know that, but that would discourage, if not completely stop him, from telling others what sorts of questions they had asked.

They saw themselves out, Snitch disappearing through a large airlock furthest from the door, and Jack glanced back once to look around at the skeleton of the ship, stretched thin in an arc to roof them in. The door opened with ease, and a startled Peacekeeper stood before them, his fist raised high, ready to knock on the door that had disappeared away from him.

"I, um, is Snitch here?" The Sebacian looked no more than 16, trembling and skinny, his skin pale in the halflight of the planet.

"What business brings you to Gyrhna#pl3, Peacekeeper?" The boy didn't seem to recognise them, which was probably for the best, he looked like he might faint as it was.

"I, um, I came to see Snitch about…Well it's none of your business! …Sir."

Aeryn gave him a piercing look up and down and held the gaze until the young Peacekeeper began to shuffle on his feet.

"Go home, boy." She said, her voice cold, "the money you need is not worth whatever you have to give." The boy looked at D'Argo and Jack, but his eyes always flicked back to Aeryn. After a pause he gave a quick nod of his head and then half walked, half ran in the opposite direction.

"He'll come back later. Desperation is a powerful motivator." D'Argo said from Jack's left, and he nodded a little bit.

"Yes," Aeryn said, her eyes still watching where the boy had stood, "but at least he has another day to change his mind, another opportunity to turn back from the path he's chosing."

Jack wasn't sure what to say in return to that, and as D'Argo didn't seem to either, the three of them began walking back towards their shuttle pod, this time walking side by side; but none of them felt like talking, so the silence weighted heavy around them, until it was broken by a series of gun shots aimed at their heads.

"Frell!" Aeryn yelled, grabbing her sons and throwing them all to the ground as more pulse hits rained around them. They ducked into an alleyway to their left and all three of them pulled out their pulse pistols.

Aeryn threw her head around the corner of the alley and then pulled it back instantly. A few showers of pulses scattered behind her.

"How many?" D'Argo asked, checking his pulse pistol and arming it.

"Three, Peacekeepers by the look of it."

"Anyone we recognise."

"Not that I could see, but that usually doesn't stop people from shooting at us." A few more shots hit to wall furthest from them, and Aeryn gave them a few bullets in reply.

"Peacekeeper traitor!" A scream echoed around the alleyways and Aeryn frowned, an old wound showing on her face.

"Who are you?" She yelled back, and followed the question with some more of her own pulses. D'Argo leaned round to do the same, and Jack gave a few of his own for good measure.

"You made us bow to the Scarrans like dogs! Now we have to scrounge in the dirt for nothing while they prosper and get fat off our work!"

"Well that's just not true." Jack said.

"And it's a lame metaphor anyway." D'Argo added.

"Split up, draw them away from each other. One-on-one is usually better odds in this sort of layout." Jack said, but his mother shook his head

"I'll split them off, get a couple following me, you get to the shuttle pod, I'll meet you there in five. If I'm not there by then, then get back to Moya without me"

"Mum!"

"And if you don't, shoot them, and then we'll have a conversation about following orders afterwards." Jack exchanged a glance with D'Argo and they both gave a nod. "Right. Cover me."

All three of them shot out at the street ahead of them, with Aeryn ducking out and running to the alleyway to their left. All three paused gunfire, then Aeryn began shooting from the other side. D'Argo and Jack stayed silent, their backs against the wall and watched as their mother threw shots at the alley ay, then ran to the one behind it, shooting from behind.

The men took the bait, running after her, their guns clutched in their hands, their Peacekeeper uniforms showing the tell-tale symbol of the rebellion on their back, a white triangle surrounded by a red circle. When they were out of sight, the two boys ran in the opposite direction, towards the shuttle pod.

They crashed in and shut the door behind them, panting heavily from running without pursuit. Jack checked his watch, strapped to the inside of his wrist.

"Three minutes," D'Argo stated, "we'll wait fifteen." Jack nodded and they sat in silence, listening for the sounds of gunshots and looking at the screen for a dash of black on the grey/brown landscape outside.

The minutes ticked past and nothing, until a crackling voice came over the emergency comm, and Aeyrn's voice sounded out through the shuttle.

"Why the frell aren't you boys in the air yet?"

"We were waiting for you!"

"I found an alternative means of transport, now get your butts back to Moya right now!" The two boys leapt to their feet and pressed the ignition sequence, D'Argo sitting in the pilot seat while Jack locked the door from the inside.

The shuttle jerked up from the ground, sending Jack sprawling onto the floor.

"Watch it!"

"We're under gunfire!" D'Argo yelled, and Jack felt a shot jerk to shuttle to one side. He ran to the screen and saw a collection of fifty Peacekeepers running towards them, pistols and rifles in hand, and furious looks on their faces.

"Frelling hell!" Jack yelled, throwing himself onto a seat and buckling up, "get us out of here!"

"Working on it!" D'Argo argued through clenched teeth, his fists white on the navigator as he pulled it towards him, and dragged the shuttle away from the gravity of the planet, and the situation. The gunfire hit each side of the shuttlepod, a black mark appearing on the floor to the right of Jack's foot.

"Frell." He muttered, shifting his feet to the right and watching as D'Argo pulled them slower than Jack would have thought possible out of the range of fire and then finally out of the atmosphere.

"Made it!" D'Argo cried, triumphantly leaning back on his chair.

"Son of a-"

The ship's viewer showed five ships flanking Moya, firing left right and centre. They watched as Moya tried to evade the five smaller ships as they darted like wasps around her, firing from every direction.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

"D'Argo?" A crackled noise rang out on the comm. D'Argo lunged for it and pushed the button.

"Dad? We're here, are you guys okay? Did mum get back?"

"She's here, she's fine. Don't come aboard, we've got these guys coming out of our ears! We're gunna…" A crackling noise took over and raised to a hiss that hurt D'Argo's ears, before their father's voice returned, "hello? Can you boys hear me?"

"We can hear you dad, repeat, what are you guys going to do?"

"We have to starburst the hell out of here. They're after us, not you. Stay on the planet and lie low 'til the coast is clear then meet us at the rendezvous point in four days' time."

"Roger that, dad, we'll see you there."

"Love you, boys."

"Love you too, dad, now get out of there!" D'Argo and Jack watched as Moya's tail filled with a bright white light, and she ripped open the space around her, disappearing into it and leaving the wasps behind.

D'Argo turned the pod around and pushed them down, back into the atmosphere and below the cloud line, banking away from the city they had been in and towards the open plains.

"How much food do we have on this thing?" D'Argo asked over his shoulder, concentrating on steering around the smaller tornados that littered the surface.

"A month or two for both of us if we don't eat too much."

"Good, then we can stick it out here for a couple of days, then make our way over. The rendezvous is about two days from here. One and a half if we push it."

"Do you know what's on the way though?"

"What?"

"Nebari Prime."

"Jack, don't."

"We could just have a quick peek! Nothing serious; a little recon here, a little snooping there. Mum and dad will be well chuffed if we come back with some more information for them!"

"No they won't, and that's not why you're doing it."

"Oh, come on, where's your sense of adventure?"

"The last time I let you talk me into an adventure, I ended up in a cage owned by a crazy toothless man!"

"Yeah, but it was fun, right?" D'Argo tried to let an indignant refusal out of his mouth, but it got stuck halfway and instead he found himself contemplating that, whilst the initial headache hadn't been great, he had had a fair amount of fun.

"They'll be pissed."

"They're always pissed."

"They'll have a nameable reason."

"We'll have a fantastic excuse."

D'Argo paused, the upper part of his brain desperately trying to claw some good sense into the rest of it; but D'Argo's brain had always had difficulty deciding which was the better plan, a fact his mother had claimed was genetic. Was it a better plan to go against everything his parents had told him, go on a wild mission with no backup and no idea what they were doing, or was it to head straight to the rendezvous point?

It was a tough one…

"Okay, okay. We'll just have a quick look around, see if anyone knows anything. Then we're heading straight back to get to the rendezvous point before they start to wonder where we are, okay? No landing on the planet, no getting involved in any rebellions and no posing as dad!"

"No problemo!"

"And we're still going to wait here for a day before we set off into 'shoot-em-up space' up there."

"Right you are!"

"Oh, wipe that grin off your face."

Jack did not wipe the grin off his face. In fact he kept it on right up until the point where they landed, several Metras out of the city on a fantastically boring piece of ground that hosted the exciting attractions of three large rocks and a bored looking shrub.

"Well doesn't this look thrilling?" Jack asked the shrub as they stepped outside for some fresh and dust filled air.

"I think I might holiday here next year." D'Argo glumly agreed. "Do you think a day is necessary? Maybe if we just wait a few hours."

"Should be fine. We can always peek our heads out, have a look and then duck back under if and when someone starts shooting at us."

"Hmm." D'Argo was unconvinced that one could successfully "peek" from a shuttle pod, but heck, their options were between that and waiting, and he didn't think the latter was physically possible. Jack lay down on the dust and threw an arm over his eyes to block out the sun. D'Argo sat next to him and surveyed the horizon for any gunfire or generally angry humanoids, before lying down himself and settling in for a long wait.

The three hours that they eventually allotted to equal a day passed like a wounded Boonite crawling along a desert; but when they 'peeked' out into the atmosphere, the coast was clear and they made their way out and through a surprisingly empty sky.

"Hungry?" Jack asked, when the ship was well on its way and D'Argo felt like they were actually making progress again.

"Starving." They both got up and began walking towards the larder, hidden in nook at the back of the ship.

"You know, I've been thinking."

"Terrible idea. What about?"

"About this whole 'passing on my knowledge about wormholes' thing."

"Yeah?" Jack paused on the door handle and turned towards him.

"Well I know dad said he wanted to wait until we were ready, but what if, you know, something awful happens to him or something?" Jack gave him a look and D'Argo held up his hands in defence. "I'm not saying it's gunna happen! I mean, dad's more resilient than anyone else in the universe, and if mum has anything to do with it they'll both live to two hundred. I'm just saying, even with all that on his side, we don't exactly lead the safest of lives, do we? I just…I don't want to find that three years down the line we've lost dad, and brought war back to the galaxy."

"You want to broach that idea with him?"

"No, I just want to protect the Wormhole Peace with, you know, the wormhole bit."

"I get what you're saying." Jack said, as he opened the larder door, "but dad's not even sure he can teach us everything he knows. He wants to make sure if he's going to try, we should be as prepared as we can be." Jack and D'argo looked into the larder and behind the shelves saw a pair of bright blue eyes staring back at him,

"What the Hezmana!" Jack threw himself backwards, his arms flailing in windmills as he crashed into D'Argo and sent them both to the floor.

"What are you…Oh frelling– How the dren did you get in there?"

Hannah walked slowly around the shelves and stood above the two of them as they scrambled to their feet.

"Hannah, I thought we agreed you'd stay on the ship."D'Argo managed, once his heartbeat had returned to a more rational speed.

"But you were leaving." She explained, looking between the two of them as they pushed each other away and brushed themselves down.

"We were coming back!"

"You haven't gone back yet."

"Well, yes but that wasn't planned…" D'Argo ran a hand through his hair and clenched onto it, pulling his scalp just enough to clear his head. "Okay, okay, well that's fine…We're, we're on our way back to Moya in a day or so anyway."

"In a few days, yeah." Jack agreed, giving her a sarcastic thumbs up, "so no worries, yeah? Back on Moya in no time and you can go back to talking to the DRDs!" He stretched his shoulders and cracked his knucles until he noticed the glare across D'Argo's face. He dropped his hands and opted instead for shoving them in his pockets. "Well I'm sure the DRDs appreciate the conversation." He said, turning to D'Argo with a meaningful look. "And I'm sure you'll do fine on the shuttle pod while we run a few errands, huh?"

"What? We can't still go, are you kidding?"

"Why not? She's just gunna sit here anyway. We'll pretend we never saw her, shove her back in the cupboard, she'll have a great time in there. It's what's she's used to." D'Argo felt the blood rush to his head and a wave of anger hit the edges of his skull. Jack's face saw he'd gone too far and he raised his hands up as an offering.

"Okay, sorry, too much, my bad, that was harsh. Look, I'm just saying she can wait here and she'll be safe as houses while we go for a little recon, and then come straight back. We'll leave the window open a crack. It'll be fine." D'Argo tried to push the anger down, back into his stomach where it belonged.

"Okay." He agreed eventually, the anger leaving him feeling vaguely sick, "okay, we'll leave her here. Moya doesn't seem particularly safe right now anyway…"

"Exactly. So, hey, how about we just make ourselves at home? We've got a day and a half to kill, and surprisingly little to do in it. I've got the shuttle pod route planned, so assuming we don't come across any large boulders or planets through our windscreen, do you guys want to play some poker?" Jack pulled a pack of cards from his pocket.

"No."

"Okay, how about a game that doesn't involve money. No bets, I promise." D'Argo hesitated, and looked at Hannah, who instantly met his eyes in return.

"Yeah, alright then. We've got some time to kill." Hannah sat down with them and looked at the cards that Jack handed her until Jack began explaining the rules of the game.

D'Argo found that it was strangely easy to kill time with his brother and Hannah as company, and they ended up spending over six hours combining cards, food, and some Raz'lak that Jack found at the bottom of the larder. By the time they had played, slept and cleared themselves up, it was two days after the shooting, and they found themselves pulling up to the intimidating shape of Nebari Prime, which D'Argo had forgotten they were actually heading to.

Nebari Prime leered its grey mass from a distance as they pulled close towards it, whilst keeping the pod well out of its immediate territory. D'Argo could see three of the four moons the surrounded it, as they edged around Nebari Prime, a little slower than the ships around them.

Nebari had been among the greater powers in the galaxy that had seen the importance of complying to Wormhole Treaty, but only so far as it agreed with their temperament.

Nebari had always kept themselves to themselves, and the imminent war threat 19 years before had not dampened their indifference and condescension to the planets around them, and had it not been for a particularly persuasive member of their species managing to persuade them on the seriousness of what was going on around them, they may well have ignored such things a completely.

Now, of course, the planet was torn by civil war. The rebels that had once been a mere speck in the planet's eye, had grown with every passing year, their numbers, strength, and riches from places unknown created a constant threat that spread across the surface like a disease.

Knowledge of the inner workings of the planet was kept secret even from their own people, so even Crichton knew little of exactly how the Nebari Council were dealing with the threat. There were rumours, some from reliable sources, most from sources motivated solely by money, or occasionally fame, so the grey mass of Nebari Prime remained shrouded in mist and mystery as ever.

They shuttle pod pulled around, just far enough from the other ships to give off a nice impression of 'we're not here to shoot or be shot at.' D'Argo did his best to drive nonchalantly and nonthreateningly, and he was fairly proud of his results, until a voice came over the speaker sounding anything but nonchalant and nonthreatening.

"You are in Nebari space. Leave immediately." Jack raised his eyebrows. Even more touchy than usual then, it would seem. D'Argo watched as he carefully leaned over to the comm systems and pushed the button.

"Er, hi there, we're just passing through, keeping out of your way. We don't want any trouble."

A face flickered onto the small screen in front of him, and a stern looking Nebari stood in front of his own panel, in his own, much larger ship.

"State your name and species."

D'Argo gave Jack a stern look, and Jack met his eyes with the slightest glint of mischief behind them.

"No." D'Argo whispered.

Jack pushed the button.

"Don't." D'Argo demanded.

A green light flicked on and their own camera sprung to life, presumably showing a picture of the two boys looking out at the Nebari.

"My name is John Crichton, from the planet Earth."

"Oh for the love of-"

"Ambassador John Crichton? You are stepping dangerously close to our planet for someone who has only command of a small shuttle pod and no weaponry."

"Just here to say hello, popping by, as it were. Checking how you're doing." There was a pause and the Nebari video lagged slightly as he leaned in to look closer at his screen. D'Argo held his breath.

"My name is General Orsank. Prepare to be boarded."

"What? No, no, negative, we'll just be on our way now. No problem, ease off, back down."

"Please shut down engines and prepare for co-lock."

"No! I – we, we can't be boarded. We're not, we haven't." Jack was looking wildly at D'Argo, but D'Argo could think of no viable excuse to not be boarded, except that they really really didn't want to be asked their actual reasons for being there.

"You are refusing to be boarded?"

"Yes. Yes, we're refusing."

"Very well." The screen flicked off and the picture disappeared. D'Argo let out a slight breath and closed his eyes in relief. From her seat behind them, Hannah was watching the whole scene unfold with a vague interest.

The first shot was small and hit their hull straight on. All three of them were flung to the side and fell to the floor. The second just made them scramble back the other way.

"Are you now willing to be boarded?" The voice on the comm was cold and unforgiving. Jack leapt for the machine and managed a gasp through it.

"Yes, yes, we'll be boarded, jeez!" He slumped back down onto the floor as one of the smaller ships slowly turned and began to roll towards them, dwarfing their ship as it edged closer and closer. About 300 metras from their ship it rumbled to a stop in total silence, and waited, still. D'Argo watched as the bay doors began to open up and expose the ships throat, before they stopped halfway, and then began to bite down again. A crackling came onto the comms, and another smaller Nebari ship edged into view, going around the larger one towards the shuttle pod.

"Kchhhh…" The comm said, and Jack leaned in to listen closer, "grccchhh…" it continued, and Jack tried to twiddle the receiving knob a little.

"Crichton?" A voice came through that made D'Argo's heart leap into his mouth, and he threw himself to his feet in relief. He saw Jack's face break into a huge smile as he pushed the button to reply.

"Chiana! How are things?"


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

They sat on Chiana's ship a few hours later, cups of steaming Nebari tea in front of them, and an unimpressed Chiana across the table.

"Well, John Crichton. What brings you to our beautiful planet?"

They had watched as the larger ship had slipped back to its position, and under Chiana's rather strong insistence, they had docked the shuttlepod onto her ship, much to the rather suspicious looks of her entire crew.

"We were just, umm…" Jack glanced over to D'Argo, who wouldn't meet his eye. Chiana was watching him and he managed to claim, "we were here to see you, Chiana! How are you? How is Nebari Prime?" Chiana's unimpressed look turned into a glare.

"Things here are dren, Jack. Why the frell were you telling a Nebari General you were an ambassador that came unauthorised into their space then refused to be boarded?"

"Because he does that sometimes." D'Argo said, and Jack wondered when the entire situation had become his fault.

"I am going to have your mivonks as soon as I get you out of this entire territory and back into somewhere where you less likely to get mind-frelled for hanging around too long!"

"We didn't know things here were this bad." D'Argo said, placing his arms on the table in front of him as Jack crossed his own.

"The Nebari Council are almost at war, and I seem to be the only one round here that actually wants to stop them."

"So you're still helping the rebels?" Chiana glanced to her left quickly, but the jumbled room was empty around them.

"Look, I'm an ambassador, okay? So I don't have a side, I'm just looking for peace talks. Trying to get people to see a bit of…Reason."

"Chiana," Jack began, if there was anyone they'd be able to trust, it was her, "we think the Nebari rebels have been stealing people from Earth. Huge ships of them. We don't know how, but we need your help. They're on the third moon, hiding somewhere." Chiana looked between the two of them.

"So all of Crichton's kids are as crazy as he is, huh?"Jack waited for a further answer, but she just watched the two of them, a small debate in her head.

"Look, we're not asking you to go with us, or even do anything. Just, maybe, point us in the direction of the rebel base?"

"The rebel base?"

"Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?"

Chiana cocked her head to one side, keeping her eyes fixed on Jack's.

"Alright. Fine, I'll give you a pointer, on the condition that we go down there, make no noise, come back with all our tentacles intact, and I don't see you next until your dad decides to visit with a whole shuttlepod full of presents for all the great things I do for him."

"We?"

"Your dad would have me roasted on a spit if I let you boys go alone…Besides." She added, "I haven't had any fun around here in cycles. This politics stuff is boring as frell." Chiana gave him the slightest smile and a small wink.

"Okay, I guess, but…"

"+52.428 by-7.848"

"What?"

"+52.428 by -7.848. that's where we're headed."

"Thanks so much." Jack said, desperately trying to fix the numbers in his head, "we really appreciate this, it won't be a problem, we'll be in an out in a heartbeat."

"Yeah, really, thank you so much, Chiana, you're honestly a life saver." D'Argo pitched in.

"That is exactly what I am… D'Argo." She gave a strained nod to him, and he threw her a half smile back. "Alright then. Give me an arn to get some stuff together and I'll meet you in your shuttle pod."

"Okay, see you then."

"And Jack, if you leave without me, your parents will be the least of your troubles."

"You got it."

Within an arn Chiana walked into their shuttlepod, a pair of tight trousers with a cropped top were laced with fur of an unknown creature around every edge. Jack couldn't help but stare at her for a moment, until he caught her smiling up at him, and he quickly turned his gaze back to where D'Argo was starting the engines.

"Ready to go?" D'Argo asked from the controllers as the doors creaked shut behind Chiana.

"As ready as we'll ever be!" Jack replied, and he glanced at Chiana again before taking a seat. Chiana sat next to him and crossed her legs towards him. Was it just him or did she lean in a little bit more than was really necessary?

"So," Chiana asked, her voice soft and low, "what have you boys been up to since I last saw you? It's been, ooh, more than a cycle, hasn't it?" A clatter from inside the larder made all three of them jump, and Jack watched as Hannah peeked her head out of the door to stare at them.

"You're back?" She asked, and Chiana's eyebrows shot up as she glanced at Hannah, then D'Argo, then Jack in quick succession.

"A stowaway?"

"Not exactly."

"Who the frell is this?"

"She's, well she's one of the humans we were telling you about. One of the ones who had been captured…"

Hannah walked out of the larder and stood for a moment, looking from D'Argo, to Jack, and letting her eyes slide over Chiana. When she registered the woman's appearance her eyes went wide and she let out an ear piercing, brutal scream that hit the walls with a clang. She stumbled backwards onto the floor and let out a second scream that continued on and on as she scrambled back against the wall and clung to it for dear life.

Chiana leapt out of her seat, confusion and anger in her face at once.

"What the-" Jack clapped his hands over his ears as the screaming rung around and around them, and D'Argo ran over to Hannah, holding her by the shoulders and trying to break the woman's gaze from Chiana's face.

"Hannah! Hannah! Frelling… Hannah it's okay, calm down!" Hannah continued to scream for what might have been hours, or might have just been incredibly long minutes. Jack's hands did nothing to stop the piercing noise from hitting the sides of his skull and he desperately fought the urge to give the girl a quick punch to the stomach. Or at least clamp a hand over her mouth.

Eventually she ran out of breath, and her scream was reduced to a vague sobbing squeak that emerged from her wide open mouth. She would have looked ridiculous had Jack not been worried the noise would start again.

"What the frell!" Chiana looked from Jack to D'Argo in pure exasperation, "Crichtons! The lot of you are nuts! When I signed on I didn't know you'd stolen one already! What is wrong with her?" Hannah's whine turned to a small gurgle, and eventually she seemed to calm down enough to sit and stare at the floor, blissfully silent.

"No, it's fine, we found her with someone else, the rebels don't even know who she is…We think."

Chiana looked at him like he was completely crazy, but after a moment, the slightest sign of amusement flickered across her face, "it takes a whole kind of stupid to take a prisoner back to their prison guards and hope they don't notice."

"It's fine. It'll be fine." D'Argo said, keeping an arm around Hannah while he spoke, "look Hannah, she's a friend, okay? She's not going to hurt you."

"Did she have this reaction with you?"

"No."

"Well that hurts my feelings."

"She was held prisoner by Nebari rebels for…Well we don't know how long for, but I don't think it's conjured up great associations for her." D'Argo gave the slightest of shrugs, "I don't think it's personal."

"Feeling better?" Chiana asked the girl before her, a note of actual concern hidden within a layer of sarcasm and annoyance. Hannah managed a vague nod, but she made no move to get up or any closer to Chiana.

D'Argo gave everyone a smile that no one returned. "Okay, good, then let's all sit down, calm down, and wait for yelling and screaming until we've gone to the moon, gotten off it, and have some really strong drinks in our hands, okay?"

He helped Hannah to her feet and led her over to the seat next to the control panel, where he gently helped her to sit down and took up the controls next to her. Chiana lowered herself back into her seat, and Jack watched as Hannah gave a glance back at the two of them, then leaned in closer to D'Argo.

Jack frowned a little as she kept him close, a hand holding tightly onto his jacket. She had a way of staring at things, like she wasn't really looking at them at all, more just looking at the air ahead of him and thinking about something behind him. Creepy as anything, basically.

His brother, on the other hand, seemed completely captivated by everything she did and said – the weirder the better. Jack watched them as they spoke in low voices. He tried to keep the frown from his face, but he could feel it creeping down his forehead and dragging his eyebrows down with it. He didn't like that girl, and he certainly didn't trust her.

The third moon inched into their view, and then grew larger and larger towards them. It was the smallest moon of Nebari Prime, but Jack's father had once told him it was probably twice the size of Earth. Its surface was cold and cracked and scattered with few settlements that grew roots deep into the ground, away from the harsh winds and into the warmth of the inner core.

The moon had been a haven for the exiled, the escaped, and the degenerate members of Nebari prime, its maze of runs making it impossible to regulate by the Nebari police. It was therefore a limbo for the planet, outside of the Nebari rule, but not outside their territory. Ships came every day to cart hopefuls out of the area, for large sums of money or whatever equivalent they could manage, and into areas of space where they wouldn't be taken in and cleansed,

They touched down half a mile away from Chiana's coordinates, donning full gear and masks to ward against the dust winds that threw grit in their face. The pressure change created a sudden blast as they opened the shuttle door, and Jack watched as Hannah linked arms with D'Argo, holding on to him as they all walked out.

He looked down at his compass, the map of the area flickering on a screen by a circle of lights. The one to his right flashed green, and he pointed towards the direction, setting off without checking to see if they were following him.

"It'll take us about twenty-five minutes to reach the settlement," he yelled above the howling winds around them once the other two had caught up. D'Argo shook his head and pointed to his ears and Jack waved to him that it didn't matter. They would keep walking until they reached it, he supposed.

It took them almost an arn in the end, with a few short detours and a battle against the wind for almost the entire way. When the first glimpse of the metallic bunkers came into sight, the look of relief on Jack's face would have been clear, had he not had a mask covering most of his face while he gave it. Chiana walked a little way behind him to his left, and Hannah kept to the other side of D'Argo at all times.

They walked to the entrance bunker, a huge rectangular shape with a bright red door. It would be the only bunker with a door to the surface, the others would be attached by underground tunnels, or abandoned for lower ground. Jack raised his arm and knocked three times, watching as the huge slab of metal shifted slightly, showing a pale Nebari face behind it, with a young face and suspicious eyes.

"Who are you?"

Chiana stepped in front of Jack without even looking at him, and he would have objected, had the small girl inside the door not aimed the question at the Nebari woman behind him, completely ignoring Chiana's human companions.

"My name is Chiana. I am the sister of Nerri." Her casual tone was lost somewhat as the wind whipped away her voice and she had to shout above it.

"Nerri…?"

"Yes, that Nerri."She stated, arching her back a little and regarding the girl with slight disdain, "are you going to let us in, or shall we just stand out here all day?"

The door opened further. Showing the rest of the body of the girl, and behind her, four, fully armed Nebari men, fully masked and suited up for the wind that blasted in with the group as they shuffled past the doorway and stood waiting as it shut behind them, deadening the sound of the wind to a dull moan behind them.

The tallest of the men took off his mask, his white skin contrasting against the black above his eyes.

"Chiana?"He asked, in suspicious disbelief.

"Heraia, long time no see." The man looked her up and down and frowned.

"Last I heard you were working with the government."

"You heard wrong."

"They're calling you Ambassador Chiana, you're trying to get peace talks and compromises."

"It's more…Complicated, than that…" She said slowly, walking towards him and leaning in close, "look, Heraia, it's me, just, ease off, okay?" She gave him a slight smile and cocked her head to one side, "I just wanna ask a couple of questions, that's all, just have a chat about old times?" The man's expression of distrust did not subside, but he shifted onto his other foot and nodded to the men around him, who relaxed their grip on their guns a tiny amount.

"See, that wasn't so hard, was it?" Chiana asked, and Jack wondered if she was pushing her luck, and whether she was meaning to or not.

Heraia kept his gaze on her for a moment longer before he gave a curt nod to a man on his right, and the Nebari leapt into action, pulling on a large door behind the group and letting it open with a crunching and screeching noise, revealing a long and dimly lit corridor that stretched ahead of them.

"This way then." They followed Heraia through the metal corridor, which ended with a hole and a single ladder leaning down it. Heraia trudged down without a word, and after Chiana followed him, Jack supposed they had nothing to do but follow suit.

Jack reached the bottom of the ladder with a thump, and the instant increase in temperature prickled at his skin. He pulled off his helmet, and then his outer suit, flinging it on top of Chiana's and Heraia's by the time D'Argo and Hannah had reached them.

Heraia began to lead the way through a second metal corridor, and Jack stuck close to Chiana, feeling the weight of the air around them grow thick. This place was not a welcoming one, and Jack wasn't sure how unwelcoming it would turn out to be.

The metal walls sweated around them, and the warm air quickly turned stifling as they walked down the sloping corridor. The metal eventually gave way to roughly cut rocks, smudged red and black with unknown minerals. They reached flights of steps periodically and passed by doors, some with a canvas or a slab of wood to cover them, others gaping wide to reveal people huddled close together, talking, gambling, but rarely laughing.

Jack shivered despite the close heat; there was a stink of angry desperation that clung to the rock walls and to the skin.

"Where are we going?" Jack voiced the question when they had been walking for a while, and his voice bounced back at them a few times before it evaporated.

"You want to talk? There's only really one person you need to talk to." Heraia's voice didn't carry far, and seemed to fall dead at Jack's feet. His expression was toneless and emotionless, and Jack couldn't help but wonder if he was as cleansed of emotions as those he fought against.

They continued in silence, and because no one else asked any questions, Jack decided not to either. The further they went the closer the silence and the heat got, until, damp and uncomfortable, their leader stopped in front of a single door, and turned to them.

"Here."He stated, as though they might not have picked up on that one.

"Here, what?" Jack asked, but Heraia had already begun walking back up from where they came from, and Jack's general gestures of 'where the frell are you going?' were ignored.

Chiana stepped up to the wooden door and pushed it open a little way, looking inside at the room ahead. Jack saw a Nebari man sitting at a desk, staring at a pile of paper in front of him. He glanced up when Chiana entered and a smile spread across his face like it hadn't been put there for weeks. Chiana let out a small squeal and ran to the man, throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him close. He returned it in kind, and they stood like that for a few moments before releasing each other again.

"Hey stranger." He said, nudging her chin and smiling.

"Hey big brother."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Chiana quickly embraced her brother again, before she turned to the others and gave them a vague gesture. "These are Crichton's boys and a stray they found." The man that Jack presumed to be Nerri looked over to them and gave a vague nod, half respectful, half distrustful. "Crichton's boys, this is Nerri, my brother."

"Why have you come here?" Nerri asked, and Chiana tilted her head to one side.

"Can't a girl see her big brother and not have an agenda?" She asked, and Nerri looked gave a look of less respect and more distrust.

"What do you want, Chiana?"

Chiana turned to the boys and gave them a small smile.

"Do you think you could give us for a minute?" She asked, a look of 'get the frell out' on her face. D'Argo was about to argue when he saw Jack give a small nod to his right and back out of the doorway again. D'Argo looked back at the two of them and caught Jack's meaningful eye, but couldn't quite bring himself to leave.

"Look, we want to know about this as much as you, Chiana, we should be here."

"Crichton-Sun Senior, I need to have a word with my brother, you can leave by your feet, or you can leave on your ass, choose."

D'Argo chose feet, but didn't want to say so, so instead he mustered as much dignity as he could and walked out, giving them both a quick nod before he did so. He closed the large door behind him and listened as Chiana's words became a muffled and indistinguishable sound.

"So…" Jack's voice echoed a little against the walls around him. D'Argo had a suspicion about what he would say, but waited until he completed before he answered. "What now?"

"We wait." D'Argo said, a little sterner, perhaps than he had meant to, but not as stern as he felt. "Chiana knows what she's doing, it's her brother. She'll get the information out of him."

"She already knows more than she's telling us. How did she know the coordinates in the first place?"

"Leave it, Jack." And D'Argo watched as Jack did try to leave it, as they stood in the dank and hot corridor, sweating a little to themselves in complete silence.

But leaving it made Jack's fidget, and he shifted from one foot to the other, searching for a comfort he could not find.

"How about we go explore?" Jack asked, scratching the back of his hands and then his arm, "just have a little poke around and be back before she knows it."

D'Argo paused for a moment, as the familiar words were said, and his familiar objections rose up.

It was as though, by an unspoken rule since their childhood, they would have a system for getting into trouble. Each time Jack would see an opportunity, for fun, for danger, for a pay off better than the odds, and each time D'Argo could always find one or two – or more often several – good reasons for going with an alternative plan, usually along the lines of "or we could _not_ do that…"

But in the end, there would be a flicker in the back of his mind, and the very good reasons not to go would look a little less bright, and be replaced by the shiny promise of an adventure.

Jack was the one that spoke up, said the stupid ideas, pushed a little too far, but in the end, D'Argo always went with him. They were a team, after all, the two Crichton-Sun brothers against the universe. He couldn't leave his little brother to the consequences of his actions.

So D'Argo offered a few half-hearted disagreements, and then a final, reluctant agreement, and neither begrudged the other his role.

"Just a little look around, we won't speak to anyone, we'll just have a quick peek about, then get back here within the arn." He managed, knowing he might as well tell a storm to sit quietly.

"Absolutely." Jack said, his arms spreading wide, "within the arn."

So they walked back along the corridor and took the first left they saw. Partly because left was always a good way to go, and partly because Hannah started wandering down that way of her own accord, so they ended up following her along that way too.

At first he just followed her because he didn't know where he was going, but slowly he began following her because it seemed like she did. He kept to her side, a little behind as she twisted and turned down the corridors, and twice he opened his mouth to ask her, and twice shut it again in silence. He could almost hear the distrust coming off Jack behind him, as his brother followed Hannah with far greater reluctance, and certainly more insecurity.

They walked for perhaps twenty minutes, twisting and turning randomly, before Hannah paused for a moment beside a wall, where a black gash tore at it. A few palms long, the mark looked like it was from a pulse rifle of some sort. Hannah held out her hand and touched the rock where it had been torn open.

"You know this place?" D'Argo asked, but it wasn't really a question.

"Yes." Hannah said, but she didn't sound quite sure.

She drifted to the left again, and the two boys followed her, curiosity and caution sitting in unequal amounts between them.

They reached a single door, embedded into the wall, but this one was not made of wood, it was reinforced metal, a panel to the right that required a code.

"There." Hannah said, and she didn't seem entirely sure of the "what" in that "where."

"Looks like a basic Hanoi key-in code panel." Jack said over his shoulder, and D'Argo nodded his grim agreement.

"How many numbers in the code?"

Jack bobbed his head in thought. "Eight, maybe nine."

"So about a billion combinations then."

"Maybe a bit less, we can assume they didn't choose nine zeros as a code."

"Probably…"

"Yeah, probably…"

The two men looked at the panel for a few moments, D'Argo thinking hard, and Jack presumably thinking a similar level. D'Argo knew they only had about five minutes before Chiana would notice they were missing. Not enough time to get back to the room, but enough time to scatter and at least look less conspicuous.

"Maybe if we…" D'Argo said, hoping an idea would come to him before he finished the sentence, and instead trailing off with a blank mind in tow.

Hannah leaned over and pushed her arm in between their shoulders, pressing eight buttons and pulling away as the door swung open and the darkness in it tumbled out. D'Argo gave Jack a meaningful look, but his brother looked away and stared at Hannah instead.

"Good memory you've got." Jack said, pointedly, looking at the panel as it sat, ashamed on the wall. Then, as though as an afterthought, "they should change the codes here more often."

D'Argo was too busy looking in through the doorway and into the darkness beyond to really listen. Jack leaned in too, and pushed past to lead the way in. D'Argo strained his eyes to see through the dark, dragging his palm along the wall, feeling for a light switch, button or lever. He eventually came across the former and flicked it upwards, watching the room as it slowly flickered with light from the ceiling.

The room was clearly a laboratory. Even if D'Argo hadn't been in a fair few in his time, the equipment, samples and sign reading "Main Laboratory" were a fairly big clue. D'Argo was careful not to touch anything. He'd made that mistake before.

They walked around the room, looking into the test tubes and at sheet graphs lying on the sides. Hannah reached out and touched every object she saw, testing the walls around her for hints of reality, and for admissions of fantasy.

"I had a dream of this place once." Hannah said quietly to the room, but only D'Argo and Jack were there to hear her. A creak behind them made all three swing round to face the door again.

"What are you three doing in here?"


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

Nerri stood at the entrance, with Chiana by his side, his look was dark beneath an impassive face, and Jack felt his blood go cold.

"We were just...Looking around." He managed, wondering if they could even hear his voice over the hammering of his heart. He started to imagine how many tonnes of rock lay beneath them and their shuttle pod, and had to force the thoughts down before the merged into panic.

"How did you get in here?"

"Well, it's a funny story really..." Jack's brain wouldn't work fast enough, and he absent-mindedly scratched the backs of his hands as he thought. Maybe his brother would think of an eloquent excuse for why they were there.

"Yeah," D'Argo pitched in beside him, "see we were just having a look around, thinking we were hungry..."

Maybe he wouldn't.

"Get out." The words were cold, nothing more. Chiana watched the interaction, her expression stern, but towards who, Jack wasn't sure.

They began to walk back towards the doorway when Jack heard the clink of a glass being picked up, and he turned to watch Hannah pick up a test tube between her fingertips and hold it up to the stark light above them.

The liquid was thick and red, and twisted in the glass as she tilted it.

"You took this from us."Hannah whispered to the walls, and they soaked up her voice like they had been waiting for her. Nerri looked at her as though he saw her for the first time, and his eyes widened the tiniest amount as she tilted her head with the tube she held.

"All the time, this and that, pieces of her, pieces of me. You were always looking, looking, looking for something, and we didn't know what it was or where it was." She looked at Nerri and held his gaze without fear. "We would have told you if we knew."

"You're a human." Nerri said, not bothering to make it a question, his voice flat against hers, their eyes locked in mutual understanding.

"From Tennessee." As though it was a joke, she let out a single rasping laugh that slapped at the air and then fell again, leaving no trace in the air or her expression.

"Nerri, you knew about this?" Chiana asked, disbelief creeping into her voice, and anger flaring up behind her eyes, "after what we fought against? The slavery of our people? You take hundreds of innocent lives and turn them into slaves?"

"Not slaves!" Nerri shouted, Jack jumped at the sound, but Hannah watched, unmoved. "We never used them as slaves, but Chiana! Don't you see? You saw it with your own _eyes_. Crichton couldn't be _mind-frelled! _They tried and it wouldn't work. These people can't be brain-washed, not temporarily, not permanently, they're immune, they have what we always _wanted._"

"You...Experimented on them?"

"Do you have any idea what this could do for us? We're so close now, it's been nearly twenty cycles but we've nearly found it! The cure for the vice the Nebari government has held over our heads for as long as we can remember! Chiana, don't you see what this could do for us?"

"I'm not sure, I'm having a hard time looking past the samples of blood scattered around this room."

"One hundred and fourteen, Chiana. That's the number of humans we took from Earth, one hundred and fourteen."

"They weren't your lives to take, Nerri."

"How many people did you see die when we fought on Nebari Prime, Chiana?"

"Nerri..."

"How many? How many people die every day for this rebellion, this war we fight in?"

"I..."

"How many?!" His shout went round the room, a question unanswered, and they stood in a silent circle, watching the man that made a decision that was not his to make.

"Where are my family?"

Nerri refocused on Hannah, as though forgetting she was there. He shook his head a little to clear it.

"Your family?"

"My family were with me, where are they now?"

Nerri didn't need to say it, it was across his face, but Hannah needed it said, needed it voiced, committed to the air.

"I had a sister." She whispered, waiting for his words. "She was there."

"They..."

"Marianne." She spoke as though she was reading from a script, cold and flat and detached. But water started to pool around the edges of her eyes, and Nerri wouldn't meet them.

"34 New Street. We shared a room. She liked pink and I liked blue, so we painted it half and half."

"The other subjects all died in the experiments...The last was three cycles ago now."

"The subjects?" Hannah tilted her head slowly the other way, "but what about Marianne?"

"I can only assume she died as well."

There was a long silence that filled the room, a silence for every person standing there, all in silent pain, one in silent screaming.

"How did Hannah escape?" Jack managed, his voice sounding inappropriate, like he had spoken too soon.

"There was a fire, a year or two after they arrived here, three of the prisoners escaped, two died in the outside, one we...Never found."

"This is not the world we're fighting for, Nerri." Chiana whispered, and she slowly walked to stand next to Jack, placing a hand on his arm. "This is not the world we want."

"Things get worse before they get better, Chiana, we fight in a world we despise, to create a eutopia from its ashes."

"Not like this."

"I'm sorry Chiana, exactly like this." Nerri pulled two pulse pistols from his waist and pointed them at Chiana and Jack. "I'm going to need you to leave this base right now, and leave the girl. We've been waiting for another subject like her for three years, I can't let her leave, but you three are free to go."

"No." D'Argo said, his voice steel.

"D'Argo, let's go, we can recon later, this isn't the time for a heroic stand."

"I'm not leaving without her."

"D'Argo, please, we have a thousand tonnes of rock between us and our only way out of here, we can come back for her."

But Jack knew there would be no going back for her. Leave now, and Hannah would be lost. A maze of tunnels and millions of Nebari, they would never find her again. Jack was saying they should leave here with them for good, and everyone in the room knew it.

"Let's go, D'Argo." Jack tried, once more, to be a voice of reason in D'Argo's ear, trying, for once, to be the one with the smarter plan. The safer plan. But D'Argo took three steps, crossing the room to be by Hannah's side, and took her hand into his.

"I'm not going without her."

So it would have to be the not-so-simple plan after all.

"Well, unfortunately I'm not going without D'Argo." Jack resigned, and Chiana reluctantly shrugged.

"Crichton will kill me if I leave you boys unattended."

"Any plans anyone?" D'Argo asked the group, without taking his eyes of Nerri.

"I think I've got one." Jack said.

"You know I can hear you, right?" Nerri asked, gesturing with his pistols to make a point.

"Yeah, we know." D'Argo said.

"On three?"

"Sure."

"One..."

"Two."

Jack and D'Argo leapt into the air, pulling Chiana and Hannah up with them, and a spark of electricity shot across the floor as Jack threw a Grennij Pulse Sphere onto the ground. Nerri seized up in sudden shock, then collapsed onto the floor, his head smacking the ground with what felt to Jack, like a rather satisfying sound.

"What was _that_?" Chiana demanded, pulling away from Jack and running to her brother's side.

"Something I picked up from a Grennij merchant."

"How does it work?"

"Um..."

"Oh, no one cares how this sciencey stuff works as long as it does. We need to get out of here!"

"Is he going to be okay?" Chiana asked, her hand resting on her brother's forehead. When the two boys didn't answer she gave them a small look of appeal, "he's my brother."

"He'll be fine." Jack said, as reassuringly as he could muster given the circumstances, "we have to go before someone notices the open secret room or the unconscious rebel leader in here."

"Right."

They shut the door behind them, and headed back up towards Nerri's office, Hannah mostly leading the way, and Jack wishing he had a better sense of direction. By the time they reached the wooden door where they had left off, Jack had started to recognise some of the corridors as being nearly identical rather than completely identical.

They headed upwards, with the slight slope leading them to colder and colder weather, and the rocks around them turned from a deep brown to a dull grey. By the time they reached the top they were all panting from the effort of walking as quickly as they could and not looking like they were walking as quickly as they could.

At the main entrance, the guards watched their approach with cold observation, but they did not stop them as they walked up the ladder and donned their outfits for the outside. The blast of air smacked them in the face, but this time they fought with the wind towards the shuttle pod, and it took them – had they looked at their watches and not desperately behind them for followers – exactly twenty-five minutes for it to come into sight on the horizon.

The first shot hit the ground a few metres to Jack's right. He was almost relieved when the blasts started around them, first here and there, until they were surrounded by it like rainfall. Waiting is almost as bad as the event, although this is less true of gunfire than of most things.

Jack looked behind to see twenty Nebari men running straight for them. Every inch of him went cold as he saw the black masks shining in the sand-ridden sun, and the four of them broke into a run, belting towards the shuttle pod.

Jack reached the shuttle first, his whole body slamming into the side in his attempt to stop when he reached it. He furiously punched in the code for the door release, his fingers flinching at every gunshot.

The door creaked open maddeningly slowly, as the twenty Nebari men turned into fourty, and then fifty, their faces emerging in the swirling sand storms around them.

Jack could hear nothing above the screaming wind and the screeching of the doors, and he pushed Chiana, Hannah, D'Argo and then himself through the gap as soon as it emerged. He glanced back to see D'Argo press the inside button, drawing the door back up again.

Jack threw himself into a seat as D'Argo slammed into the pilot's chair, flicking every switch around him as the door creaked closed and the engines whirred up.

The sounds of gunfire became louder from the inside, as blasters rained on the metal walls of the shuttle pod, suddenly seeming so thin around them.

"Go, go, go!" D'Argo yelled at the machine, as a blast ricocheted off the inside of the door and burned a dent in the metal a foot from Jack's head.

Slowly the ship began to lift upwards, and Jack's stomach lurched as the shuttlepod did. Another blast made it through the gap in the door and suddenly the metal creaked to a halt, its mouth still open enough to let blasts and sand rain in.

"Frell, frell, frell! Jack, we need that door closed!" D'Argo yelled, and Jack fought to stand up, flying from left to right as the shuttlepod was flung by the wind from side to side.

He edged towards the far wall as the wind howled in through the opening, and readjusted his goggles to see through the sand that billowed in.

A blast hole showed where the inside door control panel had been, blackened metal surrounding it on either side. Jack stood in front of it, not really wanting to believe what he saw. A blast made it through the gap and he ducked as it hit the roof of the shuttle.

"We have to get out of this fire!" Jack yelled towards D'Argo, looking at the remains of the inside controls and swallowing sand as he opened his mouth.

"We can't reach full speed unless we get out of the atmosphere, and it's going to get pretty unpleasant in here if the door's still open when we do!" D'Argo yelled.

"It's not very pleasant right now, if I'm honest!" Jack's voice was lost in the sandstorm and several blasts that left his ears ringing, but he thought better of repeating himself.

Chiana came to his side, holding a pulse pistol, which she shot randomly through the gap.

"How does this thing close?" She demanded, shooting blindly through the gap as she spoke.

"There's another button outside, but I can't reach it in this gunfire!" He yelled, looking out at the emergency close button that sat above them.

"Our other options are limited!" Chiana said, and they both then flinched away as a dent appeared in the metal door in front of them.

"Right. Okay then!" Jack took a breath to steady himself, but wasn't surprised when he felt no more steady. He grabbed hold of the door frame, clenching it tight with his fingers and scrunching his face to match.

Slowly he lifted his head out through the gap, and instantly yanked it back in again as fresh fire was aimed directly at his skull.

"Oh drenfrelldrendren." He muttered, knowing no one could hear him, and he clung to the doorframe with both arms, focusing every part of his brain on the panel switch above him. He pulled himself up, so that he could reach the panel, but keeping himself as out of deadly bullet range as possible, and extended his arm to punch in the code.

He made it to two numbers before a blaster shot made him automatically flinch back again.

"Frell it, Jack, come on!"

The third time he managed to punch in the code, but missed the enter button by inches, pulling his hand away and using it instead to punch the metal door beside him.

Chiana shot through the gap every few seconds, but Jack had an increasing suspicion that the men shooting at them didn't really care.

He took a moment to collect himself, the panel blinking green through the dust storm to tell him it was ready. Any minute now. Just press enter and we can get the frell out of here.

The shuttlepod lurched to one side and Jack lost his grip, falling back onto Chiana and losing his sight of the panel.

Jack began to scramble to his feet, and saw out of the corner of his eye, Hannah standing up and stumbling towards him.

"I'll get it." She said, looking at Jack with intensely blue eyes. "They can't shoot me."

"Err...They definitely can, Hannah!" But she was already walking towards the opening, and Jack watched as she held a hand out of the door, and then her head.

A shot hit beside her, barely missing her neck, but she didn't even flinch, instead tilting her head to one side and leaning out of the opening. The wind and sand thrashed her hair from side to side. She leaned over and pressed the button, ducking in as the door began to close once more.

"It's closing!" Jack shouted, half to tell D'Argo, half to tell himself.

The door creaked closer and closer and with a final sputtering effort, it jerked into place, letting out a hiss of air as it sealed them in. Without hesitation, D'Argo pulled them up and out of the atmosphere, and away from the moon and gunfire.

There was a sudden silence, as the storm around them faded, and the gunfire stopped. The four of them sat in the shuttlepod for a few seconds, the hum of the engine the only sound.

"That was...Amazing." Jack's voice was hoarse and it hurt to speak, a thick layer of dust lay on everything in the shuttlepod, including the people in it. Hannah shrugged a little and went to sit next to D'Argo, crossing her legs and holding her hands to her chest as he flew them up and into safety.

They broke out into the orbit again and Jack could feel the whole shuttlepod breathe a sigh of relief.

"D'Argo? Jack?" The comm. flickered to light and Crichton's voice rang out loud and clear through it. D'Argo leapt onto the button in his haste to reply.

"Dad? You're here? Oh dren, are we ever glad to hear your voice!"

As they looked up through the viewscreen they saw the familiar shape of Moya, drifting round to meet their orbit, her beautiful shape a sight for Jack's very sore eyes.

"Dad? Are we okay to board?"

"Yes boys, and your mother and I would like to have a word with you."


	9. Chapter 9

Jack and D'Argo made it out of their mother's military reprimand with all their limbs attached, but it was a pretty close call.

The two brothers stood beneath their parents' glares and Jack wished he was back on the Nebari moon, blasters, rebels and all.

"If you set foot off this ship again without my presence again, I will remove your legs so that you _can't _set foot off this ship. _Do I make myself clear?_" Jack wanted to say something witty in reply, but the only thing that came out of his mouth was a vague squeak, so he decided to just nod instead.

"Good." There was a moment's pause, then Aeryn and Crichton turned to one another.

"We have to do something about the rebels." Crichton stated.

"Without proof, we're going to struggle to meddle in their internal affairs."

"We can't let this drop. They got hold of my species, Aeryn. _Humans_. I need to know how, and I need to stop it from happening again."

"I know, John, but we need to be careful with this one."

The two of them seemed to have forgotten their children's presence, and Jack waited patiently to be released.

"Chiana has agreed to help us contact other rebel members, scope out how deep this goes, how many were involved."

"And in the meantime?"

"Umm..." Jack couldn't help but pitch in, unable to keep his own mouth from talking, "what do we do about Hannah?"

"You, will do nothing." Aeryn said, a Peackeeper captain commanding her troops. Jack felt the sting of it far more than if she had yelled. "You can spend the next month in your room, contemplating the correct ways to deal with a hostile situation." Jack looked at his feet, hoping they would provide some answers.

"You can start now." Crichton said, and Jack realised that was their cue to exit. He shuffled out of the room, his brother following behind him.

They got a few corridors away before Jack turned back to D'Argo again.

"Could've been a worse punishment I suppose!" He managed, although his hands were still sweaty.

D'Argo's hand came flying at his face from nowhere and he felt a blinding sting as his brother backhanded him across his face.

Hot pain exploded around his eyeball and for a moment he saw dots around the corners or his vision.

"Woah!" He spluttered for a moment and held his palm against his burning cheek, "what the _frell _is wrong with you?"

"That's for saying you wanted to leave without Hannah." D'Argo said, his voice stern and angry.

"You...You _slapped _me!"

"Yes."

"What the? Who slapssomeone? What are you, a thirteen year old girl?"

"Would you like me to punch you instead? Would that fill your manly quota?"

"No, I'm good, I just...Who slaps someone?"

"You would have left her there."

"Yeah, but I wouldn't have left _you _there."

"But you would have left her there."

"Yeah, cause I don't get it, okay? I don't get the big Hannah woop. I don't get why you like her, she's weird but..." He paused to be sure his brother was listening with his full attention, "but the point is you like her, so I stuck around, and I'll keep sticking around until I like her, or until you stop liking her." D'Argo took a moment to digest the information.

"I guess that's as good as I'll get."

"This is how our family is made, you know."

"Yeah, I know."

"Do you ever think maybe out family is a bit weird?"

"Nah, all families are weird."

They exchanged a smile that successfully transmitted a level of mutual respect, love and friendship that only eighteen years of brotherhood can convey and then ended it with a slightly awkward hug.

They made their way to the medical room, where Jared and Hannah sat on opposite cots, looking at each other intently. Jack watched them for a moment in confusion, and then another moment in amusement as the two of them continued to keep each other's gaze, only a periodic blinking on either side.

"Thees girl ees weird..." Jared said, turning his face towards them as they entered, but keeping his eyes on Hannah's.

"Apparently she's a new family member." Jack said, trying to keep the resignation out of his voice.

"Ee'm not sure about her..." Jared said, getting off the cot and walking towards his desk.

"Well, people have probably said that about all of us at one time or another." Jack said, watching as D'Argo walked over to Hannah and helped her off the cot, finally breaking the mutual staring contest.

"He blinks one eye at a time." Hannah stated to no one in particular.

Jack was about to input something hilariously witty and nonchalant, but he stopped halfway when he realised the hum that usually surrounded them had dimmed to silence.

"We've stopped moving." Jack said, craning to hear for sure, but no hum sounded through, and Moya's floors remained completely steady.

"Were we scheduled to stop off anywhere?"

"Not until we were out of Nebari space."

"Then stopping is probably a really bad sign."

"Nine times out of ten."

"Pilot?" D'Argo spoke into his comm. badge and waited for a reply, but none came through. "Pilot, do you read?" Still no answer.

"Command room?"

"Command room."

Jack started to walk that way, D'Argo by his side, and for some reason Hannah walked along behind them.

But the command room sat empty, pilot's shell silent, and neither Aeryn or Crichton in sight.

"What the...?"

The sound of docking made them all pull up to attention. Jack didn't even look at D'Argo as he ran to the door making for the docking station.

His feet pounded on Moya's floors, and his blood pounded in his ears. No one good could possibly be docking onto their ship at this point in time.

Jack cut through the shortest route, but still a seemingly infinite number of identical twisting corners. When the stumbled into the docking bay their feet echoed as they staggered to a halt, the sound bouncing off the walls and the small Nebari ship that perched in the centre.

Jack saw Crichton and Aeryn, their backs straight and their hands by their sides, the picture of authority, Chiana watching from the sidelines. In front of them, bristling with weaponry and flanked by two guards, was the familiar face of Nebari General Orsank, looking far more intimidating in person than the last time they spoke.

"I demand to see Ambassador Crichton."

"Yes, that is me." Crichton said, possibly having said it multiple times, based on the frequency with which he was clenching and unclenching his right hand.

"If you are Ambassador Crichton, then I should inform you someone has been falsely using your name."

"Have they now?"

Jack's hands began to itch, and whilst his parents never looked his way, he could feel their disapproval coming off in waves.

Jack was in more trouble than he usually got himself into. He was aware of that. Both him and his brother were on thin ice, and while he wanted desperately to help, to be the man his father was, or at least the man his brother was, but he found himself, for once, wondering if he shouldn't just sit back and not get involved.

"Jack." D'Argo whispered to his right, catching Jack's eyes.

"Yeah?"

"You should do it."

"Do what?"

"Whatever the craziest plan in your head is right now."

"Really?"

"It's the Crichton-Sun way, and I've got your back."

That was all Jack ever really needed after all.

"That'll be all, father," Jack strode forward towards them, surprising even himself with his sudden and authoritative tone, "no need to hold him off, I'm here now. It's me, John Crichton. At your service, what can I do for you?"

The General looked at Jack, then back to Crichton, and then turned his back to the older of the two. "Crichton, you have committed a crime against our species. You come into our space without warrant or permission. Ambassador you may be, but immune from our laws you are not. You have meddled in the internal workings of Nebari government, and the punishment for such is mind-cleansing."

"Ah, yes, you do love a good mind-cleansing, don't you?" Jack gave a quick glance behind Orsank, where his father was trying to signal him something. From the sign language Jack could see, he might have meant 'you stop glasses hat-stomach' or possibly 'you kill eyes head me' or possibly something slightly different. No help there.

"General, I have had dealings with the rebels on your third moon, my dealings with them is separate to your affairs, as the rebels do not constitute as part of your planet's population. You stated this in your own charter three years ago in order to sanctify the civil war you have created. You cannot have it both ways, General, this is not a dealing I have directly with you."

"We know the people you're meddling with, Crichton, do not take us for fools."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

"The activities of the rebels on that moon have been of interest to us for some time now, we will not have an idiotic Sebacian jeopardise what is an increasingly tenuous link to them."

D'Argo came to stand by his side.

"You know."

"Excuse me?"

"You know what they're doing down there, who they have, what they did. You know."

Jack glanced at D'Argo, confused, and then back at the Nebari before them, and realised it was true.

"We know only that their efforts are against the good of the planet we are trying to preserve."

"You know exactly what's going on down there, and you've let it happen." Jack said, pushing as much of his anger out of his voice as he could.

The Nebari stood in silence, but Jack could feel it click into place without him saying a word.

"You've been helping them do it. You're the one that got them the humans in the first place."

"I don't know what-"

"Twenty years ago the rebels were a tiny group, fighting for survival, they couldn't have had a ship big enough to fit fifty of their own, let alone over a hundred humans. You knew humans were immune, you knew the rebels would find the cure, and you wanted the information first."

The General looked at Jack for a moment before he conceded.

"If a single organism can be resist the mind-cleansing, then many can. Discovering the reason for it is a practical issue, in order to fight a disease, you must find its cause, and then we can find a cure."

"So when they find out how humans are immune, you can use a different way to mind-frell them?"

"Make no mistake, Crichton, mind-cleansing is our way of life, it is not something you can meddle with, no matter how many laws you state. This is our planet, and you have no jurisdiction here."

"No, but you kidnapped members of _my _species, General, and that is very much my jurisdiction."

"Crichton, you have no way to even prove we are involved in such things. In all honesty, I have no idea what you're even talking about. Humans? They are galaxies away, and we do not deal with the rebels to our cause."

"And yet here we are, with one of them on board this very vessel."

That got his attention, of course.

"You have a member of the species in your possession?"

"Possession? No. Crew? Yes."

"You should give it to us."

"I think I'll pass."

"The Nebari are a powerful race, Crichton, we can make your quest for universal peace a lot easier."

"She's not for sale."

"Give her to me!" The Nebari's blank expression cracked the tiniest amount, a glimmer of anger showing behind impassivity. Jack could feel the fury coming off him in cold, calculating waves.

"What do you need her for?"

"Yours is the only species we have ever found to resist the permanent mind-cleansing. The experiments are the only way to be sure this will not spread throughout the universe."

"Because mind-frelling is a way of life you would like to share with the universe?"

"The Nebari _are _the universe." The General spat, his calculated expression giving way to his anger beneath it, "the Nebari are a more powerful than any other race in this galaxy, we could blow you to pieces with a single shot! We could take every last one of you and lock you in a mine until your back was crippled and you begged to be cleansed. You are _nothing _John Cricton, you are a spec in a long universe that the Nebari race have ruled for millennia!"

The General was taller than Jack, and his arms were tense at his sides, but Jack saw a desperation behind his eyes.

"Nebari are powerful, true. The most powerful race in the galaxy, perhaps, but I don't think even you are more powerful than _every_ other race in the galaxy." Jack let his hands rest on his hips, and he no longer felt he was playing the part. In that moment, he had the power to shift wormholes, to bring war, to bring peace.

"By your own admission of guilt, you have breached the Wormhole Treaty by making slaves of a species that is not your own. This is an act of war, and will be treated as such by all other members that are held accountable for that treaty. The Peacekeepers, the Scarrans, the Luxans, the Delvians. Do you think you could withstand the power of them all?

"You have one of two options, we can stop this now, you relinquish your knowledge of how the humans came to be in your possession, and allow me full access to your government and its officials, or you can refuse, and I can create a wormhole that will swallow the entire of Nebari Prime in a matter of minutes. The choice is yours."

"You wouldn't dare." The General looked very much like someone trying to show confidence above a distinctly increasing amount of worry.

"Do not presume what I would and would not dare, General. I have been known to do a fair few things that most would not dare, and there are very few things I would not do in order to preserve this peace we have been fighting for almost twenty cycles."

The general's anger slipped a little bit further to let more anxiety show. Jack could almost hear the gears behind his dark eyes clicking as he thought of the stories he had heard about the infamous John Crichton. Some of them true, some of them exaggerated, some of them plain lies, but assigning which story was which was always the hard part.

There was a pause, and the Nebari general seemed to be thinking it over, but before he had a chance to either think or rethink his actions, Jack cut in.

"General, I have given you enough time to think on this. You can choose to heed my warnings, or you can choose to be swallowed by a wormhole and never be seen again. Thanks to the Wormhole Treaty, the choice is, however, yours."

There was a silence, in which Jack's confidence slowly began to deflate, and he had to work twice as hard to stop his body from doing so too. He clenched his teeth together hard on the offchance that would help, and slowly raised his left eyebrow, because it worked so well for his mother.

The General lifted his arm and reached for his holster. Jack saw his mother take her pistol into her hand, causing the two guards to do the same. Orsank lifted a comm. badge from his waist. "Captain, send the leviathan ship our information on the wormhole... All of it."

There was an awkward pause and Jack realised they were waiting for him to continue. Not over yet. They needed to hear it from the horse's mouth.

He cleared his throat and crossed his arms, then decided it would be better for them to be by his sides, then changed his mind and crossed them again.

"How did you reach Earth?"

"An excellent question." Crichton said quietly, keeping his eyes on the Nebari in front of him. "Seeing as Crichton closed the wormhole almost two decades ago." The Nebari gave a cursory look back towards Crichton before speaking to Jack.

"We received information from a third party regarding the wormhole. The person had been doing some research into wormholes and provided us with the knowledge we needed to..."

"To open a wormhole."

"He called it, 'slipping through.' Once a wormhole has been closed, it leaves a...A scar, where it once was, like when you puncture metal and then weld another over it. Our scientist told us if we could get the...angle, just right, then we could slip through, easier than before."

"Welding metal?" Jack asked, trying not to sound like he didn't have very many clues about wormholes at all.

"Not like welding metal." Crichton said quietly, making the general turn to him, a little more intently this time. "More like you've built a road in a desert. You've carved out this long winding dent into the ground. You abandon the road, and it gets covered up again.

"But it's being covered up with just sand and dirt, it hasn't had the years the rest of the landscape has had to...You know, compact. So the place where the road was, the ground is weaker, like it still remembers where the road used to be.

"It leaves a weaker spot in space where it was before. It should be impossible to find, unless you've been there before, and it should be impossible to open, unless you have a mass amount of energy to spare, and one hellova ship to fly through it."

"We lost thousands of Nebari ships to that Wormhole." The general said, gravely, but the glares he got were not sympathetic.

"You should have left well alone." Crichton said, fiercely, "you should have gone back to your planet and settled your issues there, and there alone. Instead you brought my people back with you, and you risked the safety of everyone around you."

"We knew the risks."

"You knew nothing!" Crichton was shouting, looking suddenly very tall, his eyes boring down onto the Nebari, who had the good sense to look down at the ground. "You mess with a crack in the universe, you risk it shattering." He punctuated the word with a fist slamming into his palm.

He ran his hand through his hair. "You knew nothing. You were a child playing with knives."

"How did you know where the wormhole was?" Aeryn asked, laying a single hand on her husband's shoulder.

"Our external source also knew of the location of the wormhole." The general replied.

Aeryn and Crichton shared a long look.

"Who showed you?"

"Crichton, you know who it was." Aeryn's voice was a tired warning.

"I want to hear him say it."

"It's always him."

"But I want to hear the words come out of his mouth." Crichton gave him a calculating stare, "who gave you the location of that wormhole?"

"He called himself, Scorpius."

"Easy money." Crichton's bitter words went to the edges of the room and echoed back at them. Jack clenched his teeth and snuck the smallest of glances at D'Argo, who did not return it. Jack had heard many stories, with flourishes and details and bows on top, but Crichton would barely even speak the name of Scorpius.

He looked at the pale looks on his parents face, and saw a twinge of fear behind their stony expressions. It was a fear of something they could not stand up and fight, not with bullets, not with words. Something worse than Nebari rebels and missing humans.

"This meeting is adjourned." Jack said, turning with an authority that made them all automatically turn back towards him. "General, you can return to your ship. We will be leaving Nebari space immediately, and will return for the details of your trial. You will not leave Nebari space, or you will be considered a wanted fugitive, and from what I've been told, that is not a title you want to bare." The Nebari looked as though he might object. "You may return to your ship now."

They turned from the landing bay, shutting the sealed doors and listening behind it for a brief moment as the sound of engines started.

"Pilot, opening the landing bay door." Crichton said into his comm. something in his voice made Jack immeasurably sad.

The listened to the sound of the door opening, the engine growing fainter, and the door closing behind the small Nebari ship.

Jack turned to his parents, wondering just how much dren he was in.

"Look, mum, dad, I know you're mad right now, but all things considered, I think that went okay, right?"

Crichton gave the slightest of sighs, and then gave his sons a half-hearted sigh.

"So," D'Argo pitched in quietly. "Scorpius, huh? You've mentioned him a couple of times. Is it bad?"

Crichton gave his sons a wink.

"I think we can handle it." He said, and Jack felt the tension leave his stomach a little. His dad knew what he was doing.

"Boys, could you give us a minute, please? Your mother and I need to talk some things through."

"Yeah, sure, dad." D'Argo said, taking Jack and Hannah's arm and leading them away.

Jack pulled himself away from his older brother when they were out of sight.

"You think they're planning how they're going to yell at us later?" Jack asked, glancing behind him.

"Maybe... Wait, "us"? Please, I was completely innocent in whatever _that_ was."

"You told me to go for it!"

"Yeah, but I don't think they heard that."

Jack let himself breathe a sigh of relief and gave himself a small smile as the three of them walked through familiar corridors, and Jack found himself immeasurably glad to be home.

"So, go on then, how was I? Pretty ambassador-y, right?"

"I was convinced."

"God, I thought I'd lost him when dad pitched in, but I reeled him in. Didn't even question me. Off you go general. See ya later... Can we make him a wanted fugitive?"

"I don't know, but that's okay, cause neither do you and neither did he."

"It's all about confidence."

"We might make an ambassador of you yet."

"Of me yet? Come on, that was gold! You could make an ambassador of me tomorrow!"

"Oh please, what if Dad hadn't pitched in with the info on wormholes you had no idea about?"

"Semantics. I could do this with my eyes closed."

"You couldn't see your eyelids with your eyes closed."

Jack gave him a punch on the arm as a gift for his wit.

"Are you guys hungry?"

"So hungry that I was contemplating eating you."

"Good to know your thoughts went that way despite having a fully stocked kitchen."

"I'm a survivor, got to think of the worst case scenarios."

"Whatever, D'Argo, your callous remarks can't get me today. We did good."

D'Argo threw his arms over their shoulders. "We always do good, Jack, that's what the Sun-Crichtons _do_."

**...**

**Epilogue **

Crichton and Aeryn sat silently in an empty conference room, a heavy air around them. Crichton ran a hand through his hair.

"If Scorpius has that information, he can recreate any wormhole that's ever been. Thousands of tiny weak spots in the universe, waiting to be torn apart."

"We'll find him, and we'll stop him."

"I can't do it again." Crichton said quietly to his hands, looking suddenly tired and old, as Aeryn saw him more and more these days.

"We have everything he doesn't this time." Aeryn said softly, "every advantage at our hands. We never had that before."

"Something tells me this won't be like before."


End file.
